m
the States peace will come; there we must fix our hopes. If we can get
those millions of brothers and sisters of ours 'across the duck-pond'--as
I call it--to see its urgency, peace must come. For brothers and sisters
they are, you know; patriotism will come in time to be considered a vice.
How can one's soul--if you take my meaning--be affected by the latitude
and longitude in which one's body was born? From the States the truth
shall come, salvation shall dawn in the west. Listen to me trying to be
poetic, it makes me laugh."

One noticed that it did.

"War is so reasonless as to be funny," she said.

"But you haven't told me yet about the little chance that you thought
would tickle Olympus," said Kew.

"You're laughing at me," said Mrs. Russell. "But I don't mind, for I
laugh at myself. I like you. Shake."

Kew immediately thought her a nice woman, though peculiar.

Mr. Russell looked in and saw the Shake in progress. He murmured
something and withdrew hurriedly. For a moment they could hear his
agitated voice in the passage reciting Milton to his Hound.

"Do listen to my husband, never silent," said Mrs. Russell. "Did you ever
see a man like him?"

There is no real answer to this sort of question, so Kew said "Yo," which
is always safe. Then he added, "Do tell me about the little chance."

"This was the little chance," smiled Mrs. Russell. "We ought to have had
a tremendously successful peace-meeting in a certain town in Ohio. We had
every reason to expect three thousand people, and we thought of proposing
the re-naming of the town--calling it Peace. But the little chance was a
printer's error--the advertisement gave the date wrong. A crowd turned up
at the empty hall, and two days later, when we arrived, they were so
tired of us that they booed our demonstration. Just the stupidity of an
inky printer between us and success."

"Do you mean to say that but for that we should have had peace by now?"
asked Kew in a reverent voice.

"You never know," said Mrs. Russell. "That meeting might have been the
match to light the flame of peace all over the world. It's bitterly and
satirically funny, isn't it, what Fate will do. Ha-ha-ha."

Cousin Gustus laughed hysterically in chorus, and then said that his
head ached, and that he thought he would go to bed early. Anonyma
led him away.

"Please don't make peace for a week or two yet," begged Kew. "Let me see
what I can do first. I am going to-morrow."

"How