When Gretel Was Fifteen
CHAPTER I
THE GIRLS AT MISS MINTON’S
“War has been declared.”
Miss Minton’s hand trembled slightly, as she laid down the evening paper, but otherwise she showed no sign of unusual emotion. There was a moment of dead silence, and every face grew suddenly grave. They all knew what it meant, those twelve pupils, and five teachers, seated at Miss Minton’s long supper table. For nearly three years this terrible thing called war had been devastating Europe, bringing pain and misery to millions of once happy homes. And now their own country was to cast in her lot with the Allies, in the great fight for humanity. It was the first time in the twenty years and more, during which Miss Minton had been the mistress of her small school for girls, that that lady had ever been known to look at a newspaper at meal time, but to-night she had left instructions that the paper should be brought to her the moment it arrived. For weeks every one had been expecting the war cloud to burst, and yet now that it had happened, they were all conscious of a certain shock. Amy Bowring began to cry.
“My brother will have to go,” she sobbed; “he was at Plattsburg all last summer. Oh, it’s dreadful. I don’t see why the President didn’t prevent it.”
Ada Godfrey’s black eyes flashed indignantly. Her uncle had gone down on the Lusitania.
“I’m glad he didn’t prevent it,” she said. “We ought to have gone in two years ago. It’s time those Germans learned they don’t own the whole world.”
“Ada,” said Miss Minton, reprovingly, and she glanced down the long table to where little Fräulein Sieling, the German teacher, sat next to Gretel Schiller. Ada bit her lip, and she, too, glanced at the only two people among them all to whom Germany meant more than a name. Fräulein had grown very pale, and there was a frightened look in her blue eyes, but she was buttering a muffin with apparent calmness. Gretel Schiller had flushed, and her lips were quivering. Gretel’s father had been a famous German pianist, and although he had died several years before, and Gretel was living with an American half-brother and his wife, and was in every way quite as much an American herself as any of them, they all knew that she worshipped her father’s memory.
“You remember the Civil War, don’t you, Miss Minton?” Grace Moss asked, by way of steering the conversation into smoother waters. Grace was one of the oldest pupils in the school, and felt privileged to ask questions.