near
losing his entire wheat-crop lately. Warren Mead's cows broke into the
field one day last week--it was the very day the Germans captured the
Chemang-de-dam, which may have been a coincidence or may not--and were
making fine havoc of it when Mrs. Dick Clow happened to see them from
her attic window. At first she had no intention of letting Mr. Pryor
know. She told me she had just gloated over the sight of those cows
pasturing on his wheat. She felt it served him exactly right. But
presently she reflected that the wheat-crop was a matter of great
importance and that 'save and serve' meant that those cows must be
routed out as much as it meant anything. So she went down and phoned
over to Whiskers about the matter. All the thanks she got was that he
said something queer right out to her. She is not prepared to state
that it was actually swearing for you cannot be sure just what you hear
over the phone; but she has her own opinion, and so have I, but I will
not express it for here comes Mr. Meredith, and Whiskers is one of his
elders, so we must be discreet."

"Are you looking for the new star?" asked Mr. Meredith, joining Miss
Oliver and Rilla, who were standing among the blossoming potatoes
gazing skyward.

"Yes--we have found it--see, it is just above the tip of the tallest
old pine."

"It's wonderful to be looking at something that happened three thousand
years ago, isn't it?" said Rilla. "That is when astronomers think the
collision took place which produced this new star. It makes me feel
horribly insignificant," she added under her breath.

"Even this event cannot dwarf into what may be the proper perspective
in star systems the fact that the Germans are again only one leap from
Paris," said Gertrude restlessly.

"I think I would like to have been an astronomer," said Mr. Meredith
dreamily, gazing at the star.

"There must be a strange pleasure in it," agreed Miss Oliver, "an
unearthly pleasure, in more senses than one. I would like to have a few
astronomers for my friends."

"Fancy talking the gossip of the hosts of heaven," laughed Rilla.

"I wonder if astronomers feel a very deep interest in earthly affairs?"
said the doctor. "Perhaps students of the canals of Mars would not be
so keenly sensitive to the significance of a few yards of trenches lost
or won on the western front."

"I have read somewhere," said Mr. Meredith, "that Ernest Renan wrote
one of his books during the siege of Paris in 1870