“Those awful days!� said Miss Fanny. “I certainly am thankful we are not really in this war; in it with our men and our homes.�
“I am beginning to feel,� Mrs. Wilson said quietly, “that we are in it, and that this is our war. There are Fayett and Jeff and William; and the President’s war message; and now the draft.�
“It’s awful to think they may make our boys go to foreign parts to fight,� groaned Mrs. Blair.
“They don’t seem to need much making,� remarked Mrs. Wilson.
“Europe doesn’t seem so far off as it used to,� said Mrs. Red Mayo Osborne, who had locked herself out of the bookcase for a whole week. “Who’d have thought, three years ago, we’d be giving up our Saturday duties to make things to send to France and Belgium?�
“Europe isn’t so far off,� Mrs. Wilson replied. “The Germans gave us two object lessons last year, to prove that—sending the Deutschland and U-53 to our very harbors. And next thing we know, aircraft will cross the ocean.�
The others laughed at the idea of such a thing.
“Well, there are other nearnesses,� said Mrs. Wilson. “The ties are tightening among English-speaking people. Didn’t it thrill you to read about the Stars and Stripes floating from the highest tower of the Parliament buildings?—the first time a foreign flag was ever displayed there.�
“I didn’t care so much about that.� Miss Fanny tossed up her chin; she prided herself on being an “unreconstructed rebel� and kept a little Confederate flag draped over a chromo of “Lee and his generals.� “But,� she went on, “it did give me a queer feeling to read about that great service the English had in St. Paul’s, to celebrate America’s joining in the war. They sang ‘O God! our help in ages past,’ the very hymn we were singing Sunday morning.�
“We people of the same tongue and blood, are getting together,� said Mrs. Red Mayo.