Mrs. Russell had been chatting with—or perhaps to—Mrs. Kennedy for a long time, about God knows what—the war, for one thing. Their views were very dissimilar; Mrs. Kennedy hadn’t a trace of patriotism. She maintained that it was a bad thing to kill so many young men, no matter why it was done. She wasn’t interested in German perfidy. She only hoped it would soon be over, no matter how. It wouldn’t make any difference who won, she said.
"Would you like to live under German rule," demanded Mrs. Russell, "and have some brutal Prussian officer swearing at you and ill-treating you?"
"I don’t believe officers would ever bother about me, American or German," she replied. "What would they be doing, hanging around where I was working? No, ma’am. Poor people haven’t got anything to lose. They don’t feel the same about their country; I dare say because they don’t own any of it. Of course, if those Germans were to come here, they’d very likely take away your house and your jewelry and so on; but they wouldn’t be likely to trouble me."
"But your daughter? She’s a very beautiful girl, you know. How would you like some unspeakable Hun to insult her—or worse?"
Mrs. Kennedy was silent. She felt in her heart that nothing much worse than what had happened could ever happen to her child. She simply listened to her visitor’s accounts of outrages with decent, womanly interest.
She was included in Mrs. Russell’s invitation to Angelica to spend a week-end at Buena Vista, but she refused, as she was obviously intended to do.
"Thank you kindly," she said. "I haven’t the time."
"Why don’t you go, mother?" Angelica asked her, out of curiosity, when they were alone again. "I should think you’d like to make a visit in a fine house like that. And it’s going to be mine some day!"
"I don’t think so," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I don’t believe the Almighty would allow such a thing. No, Angelica, there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip."
"Not when your hand’s steady."