“Don’t you think our garden is the better?� Patsy asked for the dozenth time.
And for the dozenth time, Anne—partial judge!—answered emphatically: “I certainly do. Your potatoes are taller than theirs. And your peas are better; I’ve counted the pods on the biggest vines in both gardens. It’s just splendid what you’ve done—all but Dick.�
“Oh!—Dick.� Whatever Patsy herself might say about Dick, she could never bear to have others find fault with her twin brother. “He helps Cousin Agnes in her garden. He would work here sometimes—real often—but the boys call him ‘slacker’ because he won’t join them. He’s working hard over his secret, whatever it is. He comes home so dirty! And—well, Anne, I know it’s something big, from the way he acts.�
“We’ll find out what it is,� Anne said confidently.
“I hope so,� sighed Patsy.
“But now,� said Anne, “this garden is the most important thing. Oh! it’s awful to think of all those people with nothing to eat except what we send them across these thousands of miles of ocean.�
“We’ve been saving our flour and sugar for a long, long time; looks like they might have enough to eat now,� Sweet William said, frowning. “Oh! I did want them all to have enough, and leave me sugar for a birthday cake. It’s such a so-long time since I’ve seen a real cake!� He sighed. “I don’t reckon we’ll ever have another one; not till I get old as Miss Fanny Morrison and don’t have any birthdays.�
“Father says conditions are terrible along the Hindenburg Line,� said Alice. “Cousin Mayo, what is the Hindenburg Line?� she asked her cousin who, having finished some errands in The Village, was waiting to take Rosinante home.
He explained. “The first of this year, the Germans realized that they could not repel Allied attacks in the position they then held. So in March they drew back and entrenched themselves in northern France in a position as strong as the nature of the country and their science could make it; that is their ‘impregnable Hindenburg Line.’ The Allies began, with the battle of the Aisne in April, the attacks they will continue till that great Hindenburg Line is smashed.
“Well! The Huns laid waste the country that they left; robbed and burned homes and villages in that rich farming country, and kidnapped men and women and children and set them to work in Germany. And they left behind wrecks of people in wrecks of homes, many of them little fellows like Sweet William here, half starved and crippled and shell-shocked.�