"Oh! Mrs. Gerhardt, 'ave you 'eard? They've sunk the Loositania! Has I said to Will: Isn't it horful?"
Mrs. Gerhardt, with her round arms dripping soap-suds, answered: "What a dreadful thing! The poor drowning people! Dear! Oh dear!"
"Oh! Those Huns! I'd shoot the lot, I would!"
"They are wicked!" Mrs. Gerhardt echoed: "That was a dreadful thing to do!"
But it was not till Gerhardt came in at five o'clock, white as a sheet, that she perceived how this dreadful catastrophe affected them.
"I have been called a German," were the first words he uttered; "Dollee, I have been called a German."
"Well, so you are, my dear," said Mrs. Gerhardt.
"You do not see," he answered, with a heat and agitation which surprised her. "I tell you this Lusitania will finish our business. They will have me. They will take me away from you all. Already the papers have: 'Intern all the Huns.'" He sat down at the kitchen table and buried his face in hands still grimy from his leather work. Mrs. Gerhardt stood beside him, her eyes unnaturally big.
"But Max," she said, "what has it to do with you? You couldn't help it. Max!"
Gerhardt looked up, his white face, broad in the brow and tapering to a thin chin, seemed all distraught.