Then her eyes had been caught with the glitter of true freedom. She would be a builder of ships––cast off the restraint of womanhood and be a magnificent builder of ships! And now she was finding that this dream was also a nightmare.
Everywhere she looked was dismay, futility, failure. The hot wave found her an easy victim. A frightened servant 189 who did not know the difference between sunstroke and heat prostration nearly killed her before a doctor came.
The doctor sent Marie Louise to bed, and in bed she stayed. It was her trained nurse who wrote a letter to Mr. Davidge regretting that she could not come to the launching of the Clara. Abbie was not present, either. She came up to be with Marie Louise. This was not the least of Marie Louise’s woes.
She was quite childish about missing the great event. She wept because another hand swung the netted champagne-bottle against the bow as it lurched down the toboggan-slide.
Davidge wrote her about the launching, but it was a business man’s letter, with the poetry all smothered. He told her that there had been an accident or two, and nearly a disaster––an unexploded infernal-machine had been found. A scheme to wreck the launching-ways had been detected on the final inspection.
Marie Louise read the letter aloud to Abbie, and, even though she knew the ship was safe, trembled as if it were still in jeopardy. Her shaken faith in humanity was still capable of feeling bewilderment at the extremes of German savagery. She cried out to her sister:
“How on earth can anybody be fiendish enough to have tried to destroy that ship even before it was launched? How could a German spy have got into the yard?”
“It didn’t have to have been a German,” said Abbie, bitterly.
“Who else would have wanted to play such a dastardly trick? No American would!”
“Well, it depends on what you call Amurrican,” said Abbie. “There’s some them Independent workmen so independent they ain’t got any country any more ’n what Cain had.”