"Now, really, Miss Galland," he began solicitously, "I have been assigned to move the civil population in case of attack. Your children ought—"
"After school! You have your duty this morning and I have mine!" Marta interrupted pleasantly, and turned toward the chapel.
"They are putting sharpshooters in the church tower to get the aeroplanes, and there are lots of the little guns that fire bullets so fast you can't count 'em—and little spring wagons with dynamite to blow things up—and—" Jacky Werther ran on in a series of vocal explosions as Marta opened the door to let the children go in.
"Yet you came!" said Marta with a hand caressingly on his shoulder.
"It looks pretty bad for peace, but we came," answered Jacky, round-eyed, in loyalty. "We'd come right through the bullets 'cause we said we would if we wasn't sick, and we wasn't sick."
"My seven disciples—seven!" exclaimed Marta as she counted them. "And you need not sit on the regular seats, but around me on the platform. It will be more intimate."
"That's grand!" came in chorus. They did not bother, about chairs, but seated themselves on the floor around Marta's skirts.
"My, Miss Galland, but your eyes are bright!"
"And your cheeks are all red!"
"With little spots in the centre!"