“What?” in a chorus from the girls, always ready for any kind of news, good or bad.
“The count is going to have a ball!”
“Really? When?”
“On the twenty-second of February! He says if he gives a party on Washington’s birthday nobody can doubt his patriotism.”
“Humph! I don’t see what business he has with patriotism about our Washington,” muttered Lucy.
“But he does feel patriotic about the United States, he told me he did,” said Nan.
“I think he means to take out his naturalization papers in the near future,” said Mr. Carter.
“He tells me he feels very lonesome now that he is in a way debarred from his own country,” sighed Mrs. Carter. “That book he wrote has made the Kaiser very angry.”
“Well, after the war is over that book will raise him in the estimation of all democracies,” suggested Douglas.
“Mag says that Billy wrote to Brentano’s to try and get him that book and they say they can’t find it; never heard of it,” blurted out Lucy.