break,' said Miranda, her tears
running down and copiously bedewing the vermin shirts!

"I am not writing like this for lack of any real sympathy with poor
Miranda. I've just got into the habit of giving things a comical twist
if I can, when I'm writing to Jem and Walter and Ken, to make them
laugh. I really felt sorry for Miranda who is as much in love with Joe
as a china-blue girl can be with anyone and who is dreadfully ashamed
of her father's pro-German sentiments. I think she understood that I
did, for she said she had wanted to tell me all about her worries
because I had grown so sympathetic this past year. I wonder if I have.
I know I used to be a selfish, thoughtless creature--how selfish and
thoughtless I am ashamed to remember now, so I can't be quite so bad as
I was.

"I wish I could help Miranda. It would be very romantic to contrive a
war-wedding and I should dearly love to get the better of
Whiskers-on-the-moon. But at present the oracle has not spoken."

CHAPTER XVIII

A WAR-WEDDING

"I can tell you this Dr. dear," said Susan, pale with wrath, "that
Germany is getting to be perfectly ridiculous."

They were all in the big Ingleside kitchen. Susan was mixing biscuits
for supper. Mrs. Blythe was making shortbread for Jem, and Rilla was
compounding candy for Ken and Walter--it had once been "Walter and Ken"
in her thoughts but somehow, quite unconsciously, this had changed
until Ken's name came naturally first. Cousin Sophia was also there,
knitting. All the boys were going to be killed in the long run, so
Cousin Sophia felt in her bones, but they might better die with warm
feet than cold ones, so Cousin Sophia knitted faithfully and gloomily.

Into this peaceful scene erupted the doctor, wrathful and excited over
the burning of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. And Susan became
automatically quite as wrathful and excited.

"What will those Huns do next?" she demanded. "Coming over here and
burning our Parliament building! Did anyone ever hear of such an
outrage?"

"We don't know that the Germans are responsible for this," said the
doctor--much as if he felt quite sure they were. "Fires do start
without their agency sometimes. And Uncle Mark MacAllister's barn was
burnt last week. You can hardly accuse the Germans of that, Susan."

"Indeed, Dr. dear, I do not know." Susan nodded slowly and
portentously. "Whiskers-on-the-moon was there that very day. The fire
broke out half an hour after he