She answered, “I’m just sick because the United States won’t do anything to help Belgium and France.”
Mr. Pennypacker had never received a more violent shock of pure astonishment. “Great Scotland!” he ejaculated, “what’s that to you?”
“Well, I live in the United States,” she advanced, as though it were an argument.
Mr. Pennypacker looked at her hard. It was the same plain, serious, rather sallow face he had seen for years bent over his typewriter and his letter-files. But the eyes were different—anxious, troubled.
“It makes me sick,” she repeated, “to see a great big nation picking on a little one that was only keeping its promise.”
Her employer cast about for a conceivable reason for the aberration. “Any of your folks come here from there?” he ventured.
“Gracious, no!” cried Ellen, almost as much shocked as Maggie would have been at the idea that there might be “foreigners” in her family. She added: “But you don’t have to be related to a little boy, do you, to get mad at a man that’s beating him up, especially if the boy hasn’t done anything he oughtn’t to?”
Mr. Pennypacker stared. “I don’t know that I ever looked at it that way.” He added: “I’ve been so taken up with that lost shipment of nails, to tell the truth, that I haven’t read much about the war. There’s always some sort of a war going on over there in Europe, seems to me.” He stared for a moment into space, and came back with a jerk to the letter he was dictating.
That evening, over the supper-table, he repeated to his wife what his stenographer had said. His wife asked, “That little sallow Miss Boardman that never has a word to say for herself?” and upon being told that it was the same, said wonderingly, “Well, what ever started her up, I wonder?” After a time she said: “Is Germany so much bigger than Belgium as all that? Pete, go get your geography.” She and her husband and their High School son gazed at the map. “It looks that way,” said the father. “Gee! They must have had their nerve with them! Gimme the paper.” He read with care the war-news and the editorial which he had skipped in the morning, and as he read he looked very grave, and rather cross. When he laid the paper down he said, impatiently: “Oh, damn the war! Damn Europe, anyhow!” His wife took the paper out of his hand and read in her turn the news of the advance into Northern France.
Just before they fell asleep his wife remarked out of the darkness, “Mr. Scheidemann, down at the grocery, said to-day the war was because the other nations were jealous of Germany.”