“Since the twenty-fifth.”
“Tiens! And old Papa Kaiser and the Clown Prince Footit—what do they say to that?”
“It must be stopped.”
“What! Sang dieu! We must stop mobilising 341 against the Austrians? But we are not going to stop, you know, while Francis Joseph continues to pull faces at poor old Servian Peter!”
Neeland said:
“The evening paper has it that Austria is more reasonable and that the Servian affair can be arranged. There will be no war,” he added confidently.
“There will be war,” remarked Nini with a shrug of her bare, brown shoulders over which her hair and her gilded sequins fell in a bright mass.
“Why?” asked Neeland, smiling.
“Why? Because, for one thing, you have brought war into Europe!”
“Come, now! No mystery!” said Sengoun gaily. “Explain how my comrade has brought war into Europe, you little fraud!”