"Ah, Arthur writes that he is too much concerned at the prospect of war. He apparently does not approve of our frivolous doings. The times are too serious."
"I do not see why he need take things so to heart. He is not a—a reconcentrado." Brenda's words may have seemed like an attempt at levity, but, indeed, she felt far from cheerful. She concluded with a weak, little "But you don't think that there will be a war, do you, Ralph?"
"I do, indeed, think that there will be a war, dear sister-in-law, but I also think that it may be some distance off, and that we might as well eat, drink, and be merry, in other words, enjoy the Artists' Festival," he rejoined.
XVI
THE ARTISTS' FESTIVAL
It was unfortunate that the Artists' Festival should have fallen on the evening of the day succeeding the formal declaration of war, or, as some of the younger people put it, that war should have been declared on the eve of the Festival; for, they urged, the arrangements for the Festival had been made before war had been even thought of, and so, if the President and Congress had only waited a day—
But public affairs take their course, and Boston is a very small corner of this large country, and though some persons may have absented themselves from a sense of duty to their country, Brenda agreed with Ralph that these never would be missed, so crowded did the hall prove after the French play had ended and the seats had been removed.
The patronesses, seated on a dais on one side of the hall, were gorgeous in robes of cloth of gold, with the elaborate head-dresses of the time.
The procession as it passed along was well worth seeing,—the trumpeters at the head, the craftsmen and village folk, the brown-robed monks singing a solemn chant, crusaders in scarlet coats, knights in armor, ladies in sweeping trains, and everywhere the high-horned cap with its graceful and inconvenient veil.