France. I am sure of it. The Germans will try to smash through somewhere.”
“But he told you that they would not pass,” said Rilla, seriously. She never laughed at Gertrude’s dreams as the doctor did.
“I do not know if that was prophecy or desperation. Rilla, the horror of that dream holds me yet in an icy grip. We shall need all our courage before long.”
Dr. Blythe did laugh at the breakfast table—but he never laughed at Miss Oliver’s dreams again; for that day brought news of the opening of the Verdun offensive, and thereafter through all the beautiful weeks of spring the Ingleside family, one and all, lived in a trance of dread. There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by foot the Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim barrier of desperate France.
Susan’s deeds were in her spotless kitchen at Ingleside, but her thoughts were on the hills around Verdun. “Mrs. Dr. dear,” she would stick her head in at Mrs. Blythe’s door the last thing at night to remark, “I do hope the French have hung on to the Crow’s Wood today,” and she woke at dawn to wonder if Dead Man’s Hill—surely so named by some prophet—was still held by the “poyloos.” Susan could have drawn a map of the country around Verdun that would have satisfied a chief of staff.
“If the Germans capture Verdun the spirit of France will be broken,” Miss Oliver said bitterly.
“But they will not capture it,” staunchly said Susan, who could not eat her dinner that day for fear lest they do that very thing. “In the first place, you dreamed
