“A dangerous man,” was his answer.
“I believe you!” Miss Ellen nodded. “Mark my words, Mr. Meredith, that man is going to fight somebody yet. He’s aching to. He is going to set the world on fire.”
“If you mean that he will wantonly precipitate a great war I hardly think so,” said Mr. Meredith. “The day has gone by for that sort of thing.”
“Bless you, it hasn’t,” rumbled Ellen. “The day never goes by for men and nations to make asses of themselves and take to the fists. The millenniun isn’t that near, Mr. Meredith, and you don’t think it is any more than I do. As for this Kaiser, mark my words, he is going to make a heap of trouble”—and Miss Ellen prodded her book emphatically with her long finger. “Yes, if he isn’t nipped in the bud he’s going to make trouble. We’ll live to see it—you and I will live to see it, Mr. Meredith. And who is going to nip him? England should, but she won’t. Who is going to nip him? Tell me that, Mr. Meredith.”
Mr. Meredith couldn’t tell her, but they plunged into a discussion of German militarism that lasted long after Rosemary had found the book. Rosemary said nothing, but sat in a little rocker behind Ellen and stroked an important black cat meditatively. John Meredith hunted big game in Europe with Ellen, but he looked oftener at Rosemary than at Ellen, and Ellen noticed it. After Rosemary had gone to the door with him and come back Ellen rose and looked at her accusingly.
“Rosemary West, that man has a notion of courting you.”
Rosemary quivered. Ellen’s speech was like a blow to her. It rubbed all the bloom off the pleasant evening. But she would not let Ellen see how it hurt her.
“Nonsense,” she said, and laughed, a little too carelessly. “You see a beau for me in every bush, Ellen. Why he told me all about his wife to-night—how much she was to him—how empty her death had left the world.”
“Well, that may be his way of courting,” retorted Ellen. “Men have all kinds of ways, I understand. But don’t forget your promise, Rosemary.”
“There is no need of my either forgetting or remembering it,” said Rosemary, a little wearily. “You forget that I’m an old maid, Ellen. It is only your sisterly delusion that I am still young and blooming and dangerous. Mr. Meredith merely wants to be a friend—if he wants that much itself. He’ll forget us both long before he gets back to the manse.”