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 dear, but I hope for better things. I never was very partial to whiskers but one cannot have everything.”

When news came in the morning that after all Wilson was re-elected, Susan tacked to catch another breeze of optimism.

“Well, better a fool you know than a fool you do not know, as the old proverb has it,” she remarked cheerfully. “Not that I hold Woodrow to be a fool by any means, though by times you would not think he had the sense he was born with. But he is a good letter writer at least, and we do not know if the Hughes man is even that. All things being considered I commend the Yankees. They have shown good sense and I do not mind admitting it. Cousin Sophia wanted them to elect Roosevelt and is much disgruntled because they would not give him a chance. I had a hankering for him myself but we must believe that Providence overrules these matters and be satisfied,—though what the Almighty means in this affair of Roumania I cannot fathom—saying it with all reverence.”

Susan fathomed it—or thought she did—when the Asquith ministry went down and Lloyd George became Premier.

“Mrs. Dr. dear, Lloyd George is at the helm at last. I have been praying for this for many a day. Now we shall soon see a blessed change. It took the Roumanian disaster to bring it about, no less, and that is the meaning of it, though I could not see it before. There will be no more shilly-shallying. I consider that the war is as good as won, and that I shall tie to, whether Bucharest falls or not.”

Bucharest did fall—and Germany proposed peace negotiations. Whereat Susan scornfully turned a deaf