her glasses. Susan had never given in to glasses before, but she had done so at last in order to be able to read the war news—and not a dispatch got by her. “Can you tell me, Miss Oliver, how to pronounce M-l-a-w-a and B-z-u-r-a and P-r-z-e-m-y-s-l?”
“That last is a conundrum which nobody seems to have solved yet, Susan. And I can make only a guess at the others.”
“These foreign names are far from being decent, in my opinion,” said disgusted Susan.
“I daresay the Austrians and Russians would think Saskatchewan and Musquodoboit about as bad, Susan,” said Miss Oliver. “The Serbians have done wonderfully of late. They have captured Belgrade.”
“And sent the Austrian creatures packing across the Danube with a flea in their ear,” said Susan with a relish, as she settled down to examine a map of Eastern Europe, prodding each locality with her knitting needle to brand it on her memory. “Cousin Sophia said awhile ago that Serbia was done for, but I told her there was still such a thing as an over-ruling Providence, doubt it who might. It says here that the slaughter was terrible. For all they were foreigners it is awful to think of so many men being killed, Mrs. Dr. dear—for they are scarce enough as it is.”
Rilla was upstairs relieving her over-charged feelings by writing in her diary.
“Things have all ‘gone catawampus,’ as Susan says, with me this week. Part of it was my own fault and part of it wasn’t, and I seem to be equally unhappy over both parts.
“I went to town the other day to buy a new winter hat. It was the first time nobody insisted on coming
