Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/123

 hope and fear over the varying dispatches from day to day.

“A few months ago,” said Miss Oliver, “we thought and talked in terms of Glen St. Mary. Now, we think and talk in terms of military tactics and diplomatic intrigue.”

There was just one great event every day—the coming of the mail. Even Susan admitted, that from the time the mail-courier’s buggy rumbled over the little bridge between the station and the village until the papers were brought home and read, she could not work properly.

“I must take up my knitting then and knit hard till the papers come, Mrs. Dr. dear. Knitting is something you can do, even when your heart is going like a trip-hammer and the pit of your stomach feels all gone and your thoughts are catawampus. Then when I see the headlines, be they good or be they bad, I calm down and am able to go about my business again. It is an unfortunate thing that the mail comes in just when our dinner rush is on, and I think the Government could arrange things better. But the drive on Calais has failed, as I felt perfectly sure it would, and the Kaiser will not eat his Christmas dinner in London this year. Do you know, Mrs. Dr. dear” Susan’s voice lowered as a token that she was going to impart a very shocking piece of information,—“I have been told on good authority—or else you may be sure I would not be repeating it when it concerns a minister—that the Rev. Mr. Arnold goes to Charlottetown every week and takes a Turkish bath for his rheumatism. The idea of him doing that when we are at war with Turkey? One of his own deacons has