all_ in it. It's a
whole country in arms."

Teddy nodded thoughtfully.

"There's our fleet," said Letty.

"Well, _that_ won't save Paris, will it?"

Mr. Direck didn't, he declared, want to make disagreeable talk, but this
was a thing people in England had to face. He felt like one of them
himself--"naturally." He'd sort of hurried home to them--it was just
like hurrying home--to tell them of the tremendous thing that was going
to hit them. He felt like a man in front of a flood, a great grey flood.
He couldn't hide what he had been thinking. "Where's our army?" asked
Letty suddenly.

"Lost somewhere in France," said Teddy. "Like a needle in a bottle of
hay."

"What I keep on worrying at is this," Mr. Direck resumed. "Suppose they
did come, suppose somehow they scrambled over, sixty or seventy thousand
men perhaps."

"Every man would turn out and take a shot at them," said Letty.

"But there's no rifles!"

"There's shot guns."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," said Mr. Direck. "They'd
massacre....

"You may be the bravest people on earth," said Mr. Direck, "but if you
haven't got arms and the other chaps have--you're just as if you were
sheep."

He became gloomily pensive.

He roused himself to describe his experiences at some length, and the
extraordinary disturbance of his mind. He related more particularly his
attempts to see the sights of Cologne during the stir of mobilisation.
After a time his narrative flow lost force, and there was a general
feeling that he ought to be left alone with Cissie. Teddy had a letter
that must be posted; Letty took the infant to crawl on the mossy stones
under the pear tree. Mr. Direck leant against the window-sill and became
silent for some moments after the door had closed on Letty.

"As for you, Cissie," he began at last, "I'm anxious. I'm real anxious.
I wish you'd let me throw the mantle of Old Glory over you."

He looked at her earnestly.

"Old Glory?" asked Cissie.

"Well--the Stars and Stripes. I want you to be able to claim American
citizenship--in certain eventualities. It wouldn't be so very difficult.
All the world over, Cissie, Americans are respected.... Nobody dares
touch an American citizen. We are--an inviolate people."

He paused. "But how?" asked Cissie.

"It would be perfectly easy--perfectly."

"How?"

"Just marry an American citizen," said Mr. Direck, with his face beaming
with ingenuous self-approval. "Then you'd be safe, and I'd