“Oh, look!” exclaimed Isabel, whose sharp eyes were darting everywhere. “There's the Rushbrooke's lovely new launch. Isn't it beautiful!”
“Huh!” shouted Helen. “It is not half as pretty as ours.”
“Oh, hush, Helen,” said the scandalised Isabel. “It is lovely, isnt it, Jane? And there is Lloyd Rushbrooke. I think he's lovely, too. And who is that with him, Jane—that pretty girl? Oh, isn't she pretty?”
“That's Helen Brookes,” said Jane in a low voice.
“Oh, isn't she lovely!” exclaimed Isabel.
“Lovely bunch, Isabel,” said Jim with a grin.
“I don't care, they are,” insisted Isabel. “And there is Mr. McPherson, Jane,” she added, her sharp eyes catching sight of their Winnipeg minister through the crowd. “He's coming this way. What are the people all waiting for, Jane?”
The Reverend Andrew McPherson was a tall, slight, dark man, straight but for the student's stoop of his shoulders, and with a strikingly Highland Scotch cast of countenance, high cheek bones, keen blue eyes set deep below a wide forehead, long jaw that clamped firm lips together. He came straight to where Mr. Murray and Dr. Brown were standing.
“I have just received from a friend in Winnipeg the most terrible news,” he said in a low voice. “Germany has declared war on Russia and France.”
“War! War! Germany!” exclaimed the men in awed, hushed voices, a startled look upon their grave faces.