ng remark to me? 'Go,' I thundered, and I
just caught up that iron pot. I could see that he thought I had
suddenly gone insane, and I suppose he considered an iron pot full of
boiling dye was a dangerous weapon in the hands of a lunatic. At any
rate he went, and stood not upon the order of his going, as you saw for
yourself. And I do not think we will see him back here proposing to us
again in a hurry. No, I think he has learned that there is at least one
single woman in Glen St. Mary who has no hankering to become Mrs.
Whiskers-on-the-moon."

CHAPTER XXVII

WAITING

Ingleside,
1st November 1917

"It is November--and the Glen is all grey and brown, except where the
Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in
the sombre landscape, although every other tree has shed its leaves. It
has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late. The Caporetto
disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much
consolation out of the present state of affairs. The rest of us don't
try. Gertrude keeps saying desperately, 'They must not get Venice--they
must not get Venice,' as if by saying it often enough she can prevent
them. But what is to prevent them from getting Venice I cannot see.
Yet, as Susan fails not to point out, there was seemingly nothing to
prevent them from getting to Paris in 1914, yet they did not get it,
and she affirms they shall not get Venice either. Oh, how I hope and
pray they will not--Venice the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic.
Although I've never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did--I've
always loved it--it has always been to me 'a fairy city of the heart.'
Perhaps I caught my love of it from Walter, who worshipped it. It was
always one of his dreams to see Venice. I remember we planned
once--down in Rainbow Valley one evening just before the war broke
out--that some time we would go together to see it and float in a
gondola through its moonlit streets.

"Every fall since the war began there has been some terrible blow to
our troops--Antwerp in 1914, Serbia in 1915; last fall, Rumania, and
now Italy, the worst of all. I think I would give up in despair if it
were not for what Walter said in his dear last letter--that 'the dead
as well as the living were fighting on our side and such an army cannot
be defeated.' No it cannot. We will win in the end. I will not doubt it
for one moment. To let myself doubt would be to 'break faith.'

"We have all been c