“We’re in right enough,” George said bitterly, “in up to the neck. Mother says so. It’s only the President hasn’t said ‘Go’ yet—you know what Governments are, ‘waiting and seeing,’ and all that rot. Look at your own! And everybody getting killed all the time.”
“I know,” Alison said. “But that’s what makes the difference. We are getting killed, all the time, even here in London.”
George put the little flag in his pocket. “I came to wish you a happy New Year, Alison,” he said with an effort to speak pleasantly. “I’ll have to get you something else. There’s some little silver things for the shop for you, Barbara, and a machine-gun for Jasper. Perhaps the partickler Mr. Strachan wouldn’t mind having that on his roof to fire at the Huns when they come over.”
“Won’t you let me keep the flag?” Alison asked. “Then if ever America....”
“If ever,” George interrupted scornfully. “That’s all you know about it. If you’ll wait you’ll jolly well see this time. And you won’t wait long!”
But he kept the flag in his pocket; and that night he put it in an envelope to keep it clean.
George was right. She didn’t have to wait so very much longer, for on April 6th, America declared war on Germany, and he appeared directly after breakfast waving a Stars and Stripes large enough to have covered the doll’s house like a tablecloth, so they hung it out of the nursery window instead, and Jasper “t’luted” it when he went out in his pram. And Alison got the little flag from George and put it between that of England and France on the doll’s house, and he further presented the Strachans with two little khaki gunners to man the gun on the roof, for there were rumors to the effect that London would get it particularly hot that summer. The Huns were so angry about America.
That very morning great-uncle Jasper came to see the children, and gave each of them, including George, a bright new half-crown.
Jasper was much pleased with his, and refused to be parted from it even after Nannie had dressed him to go out. He declared he would hold it exceedingly tight and not “jop” it. Nannie had taken him with her down to the kitchen to get the list of wanted groceries from cook, and before you could say “knife” he had raced into the scullery, mounted a chair, and thrust the new half-crown down into one of the divisions of the knife-machine, proclaiming triumphantly that it was “a bid money-box.” And there the half-crown remains to this day unless somebody has been demobilized who understands Kent’s knife-machines.
Nannie hated to take Jasper to shops instead of the Park, but she had to do it sometimes because things had to be got and there was no one else to fetch them; besides, the “pram was handy for parcels.” He thoroughly enjoyed these expeditions and certainly cheered up the shopping of other people.