, she's a born manager--everyone knows
that. She's very fond of managing, too--and people like that are very
necessary I admit. So don't look at me as if I'd said something
perfectly dreadful, Betty, please. I'm quite willing to agree that
Rilla Blythe is the embodiment of all the virtues, if that will please
you. And no doubt it is a virtue to be quite unmoved by things that
would crush most people."

Some of Irene's remarks were reported to Rilla; but they did not hurt
her as they would once have done. They didn't matter, that was all.
Life was too big to leave room for pettiness. She had a pact to keep
and a work to do; and through the long hard days and weeks of that
disastrous autumn she was faithful to her task. The war news was
consistently bad, for Germany marched from victory to victory over poor
Rumania. "Foreigners--foreigners," Susan muttered dubiously. "Russians
or Rumanians or whatever they may be, they are foreigners and you
cannot tie to them. But after Verdun I shall not give up hope. And can
you tell me, Mrs. Dr. dear, if the Dobruja is a river or a mountain
range, or a condition of the atmosphere?"

The Presidential election in the United States came off in November,
and Susan was red-hot over that--and quite apologetic for her
excitement.

"I never thought I would live to see the day when I would be interested
in a Yankee election, Mrs. Dr. dear. It only goes to show we can never
know what we will come to in this world, and therefore we should not be
proud."

Susan stayed up late on the evening of the eleventh, ostensibly to
finish a pair of socks. But she 'phoned down to Carter Flagg's store at
intervals, and when the first report came through that Hughes had been
elected she stalked solemnly upstairs to Mrs. Blythe's room and
announced it in a thrilling whisper from the foot of the bed.

"I thought if you were not asleep you would be interested in knowing
it. I believe it is for the best. Perhaps he will just fall to writing
notes, too, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I hope for better things. I never was
very partial to whiskers, but one cannot have everything."

When news came in the morning that after all Wilson was re-elected,
Susan tacked to catch another breeze of optimism.

"Well, better a fool you know than a fool you do not know, as the old
proverb has it," she remarked cheerfully. "Not that I hold Woodrow to
be a fool by any means, though by times you would not think he has the
sense he was b