Gertrude and Mrs. Blythe looked dismally¹ at each other, and Rilla, who was feeding Jims a Morganized diet from a carefully sterilized² spoon, laid the said spoon down on his tray, utterly³ regardless of germs, and said, "Oh, dear me," in as tragic⁴ a tone as if the news had come as a thunderbolt instead of being a foregone conclusion from the preceding week's dispatches. They had thought they were quite resigned to Warsaw's fall but now they knew they had, as always, hoped against hope.

 

"Now, let us take a brace⁵," said Susan. "It is not the terrible thing we have been thinking. I read a dispatch three columns long in the Montreal Herald⁶ yesterday that proved that Warsaw was not important from a military point of view at all. So let us take the military point of view, doctor dear."

 

"I read that dispatch, too, and it has encouraged me immensely," said Gertrude. "I knew then and I know now that it was a lie from beginning to end. But I am in that state of mind where even a lie is a comfort, providing it is a cheerful lie."

 

"In that case, Miss Oliver dear, the German official reports ought to be all you need," said Susan sarcastically⁷. "I never read them now because they make me so mad I cannot put my thoughts properly on my work after a dose of them. Even this news about Warsaw has taken the edge off my afternoon's plans. Misfortunes never come singly. I spoiled my baking of bread today—and now Warsaw has fallen—and here is little Kitchener bent⁹ on choking himself to death."

 

Jims was evidently trying to swallow his spoon, germs and all. Rilla rescued him mechanically and was about to resume the operation of feeding him when a casual remark of her father's sent such a shock and thrill over her that for the second time she dropped that

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