that,’ said I. ‘It might hurt his feelings and he has likely enough to worry him as it is.’ But you cannot cheer Cousin Sophia up, no matter how sarcastic you are, Mrs. Dr. dear. She sighed for the third time and groaned out, ‘But the Russians are retreating fast,’ and I said, ‘Well, what of it? They have plenty of room for retreating, have they not?’ But all the same, Mrs. Dr. dear, though I would never admit it to Cousin Sophia, I do not like the situation on the eastern front.”
Nobody else liked it either; but all summer the Russian retreat went on—a long-drawn out agony.
“I wonder if I shall ever again be able to await the coming of the mail with feelings of composure—never to speak of pleasure,” said Gertrude Oliver. “The thought that haunts me night and day is—will the Germans smash Russia completely and then hurl their eastern army, flushed with victory, against the western front?”
“They will not, Miss Oliver dear,” said Susan, assuming the role of prophetess. “In the first place, the Almighty will not allow it, in the second, Grand Duke Nicholas, though he may have been a disappointment to us in some respects, knows how to run away decently and in order, and that is a very useful knowledge when Germans are chasing you. Norman Douglas declares he is just luring them on and killing ten of them to one he loses. But I am of the opinion he cannot help himself and is just doing the best he can under the circumstances, the same as the rest of us. So do not go so far afield to borrow trouble, Miss Oliver dear, when there is plenty of it already camping on our very doorstep.”
