"No, don't speak to any one yet," she added. "We'll keep the secret a while longer, till I've thought out a better plan."
This morning another queer thing happened. As there was no school, we were all sitting on the veranda discussing the startling news in the paper, the assassination of the Archduke of Austria, which happened yesterday. Just then Louis came over to ask us to go out in the launch.
"What do you think of the news?" he asked.
We said it was awful, and that we were wondering what would happen next.
"You ought to have seen Monsieur when he read it," went on Louis, laughing at the recollection. "He got up, crumpled the paper into a ball, and stormed about the place as if he were having a fit. I asked him why he was so excited about it, and he immediately began to reel off a lot about the 'balance of power' in Europe,—how it would be upset and what Austria would be likely to do, where Russia would object and how France might be affected, and a whole lot more that I couldn't begin to understand. He's a great student of international politics, he says, and this news seemed to upset him a lot. I'm sure I can't see why."
The Imp poked me so hard in the ribs that I almost shrieked aloud, but I saw at once what she must be thinking. Are Monsieur's plans upset by this, I wonder? Or are we just imagining trouble where there is none? I'm sure I don't know. But of one thing I'm certain. I never realized how strange it would feel to go off for a picnic up the river in a launch run by a boy in a pair of paint bespattered overalls, whose ancestors sat on the throne of France and who might, in his turn, become the future ruler of that country.
Anyhow, I don't like it. I'm not happy, and I wish things were just as they used to be. So does Carol, but I'm afraid the Imp enjoys all the excitement.