"The new searchlights," Madge remarked in a dry tone. "Rum if we should come in for a Zeppelin raid!"
"How dim it is in London!" Nan said, as she stepped out of the railway carriage. "There must be a fog."
"No. They keep the lights low these days."
On the opposite side of the platform another train, a very long one, was discharging its passengers. Most of these people, with untidy hair and sleep-defrauded eyes, were dressed in stained and tumbled odds and ends. Some were in working-clothes; women in great aprons, many carrying babies; little children holding to their skirts; and nearly every soul in the motley company, even the children, had one or more bundles, bags, or boxes in their hands. They were like people who had been waked suddenly out of a nightmare and told to run for the train. They seemed not to see the prosaic sights of the platform. The look of nightmare was still in their eyes. A middle-aged woman and an old man stood clinging together. The saddest immigrant ever landed in the New World had not shown a face like these.
"Where do they come from?" Nan was looking nearly as bewildered as the foreign-speaking horde.
"They come from Belgium," Napier said.
Singleton was waiting to hand Nan and Miss Greta into his cab.
"Non! non!" a high, agitated voice said in passing, "les Allemands n'ont pas dépassé la ligne Ostende-Menin!"
Out in the street newsboys were crying an extra: "Great battle raging! Arrival of Canadian Troops!"