Christopher and Columbus Read Online Free PDF Page A

That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the
devil hadn't Alice thought of
that
? He knew some Americans; he didn't like them, but
he knew them; and he would write to them, or Alice would write to
them, and tell them the twins were coming. He would give the twins
£200,--damn it, nobody could say that wasn't handsome,
especially in war-time, and for a couple of girls who had no
earthly sort of claim on him, whatever Alice might choose to think
they had on her. Yet it was such a confounded mixed-up situation
that he wasn't at all sure he wouldn't come under the
Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money, as aiding the
enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to be rid
of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would
fall on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed
Germans without making a face.
    Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance,
that's what
they've
done," he said to himself--for this was
1916, and America had not yet made her magnificent entry into the
war--as he had already said to himself a hundred times. "Lost
their chance of coming in on the side of civilization, and helping
sweep the world up tidy of barbarism. Shoulder to shoulder with us,
that's where
they
ought to have been. English-speaking races--duty to
the world--" He then damned the Americans; but was suddenly
interrupted by perceiving that if they had been shoulder to
shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been able to
send them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was,
he conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could
not, however, concede any others.
    At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now,"
sighed Aunt Alice to herself, as she nervously crumbled her
toast.
    It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet
Sunday, when he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook
had overdone the joint.
CHAPTER III
    And so, on a late September afternoon, the
St. Luke
, sliding away from her moorings, relieved Uncle
Arthur of his burden.
    It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it
would not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies
themselves knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made
Uncle Arthur feel so pleasant as he walked home across his park
from golf to tea that for a moment he was actually of a mind to
kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and perhaps even address her in the
language of resuscitated passion, which in Uncle Arthur's mouth
was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in case it should
make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge that
produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of
the
St. Luke
hungrily watching the people on the wharf.
    For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth
whose enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one
direction. And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother,
in England. It seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so
far away, and leave her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel
like that. She was with them just the same; wherever they went now
she would be with them, and they could hear her saying at that very
moment, "Little darlings,
don't
cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling
afternoon, the sort of afternoon anybody might be expected to cry
on, and not one of the people waving handkerchiefs were waving
handkerchiefs to them.
    "We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose,
eyeing the handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.
    "I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked
Anna-Felicitas in her gentle, staid voice, for she was having a
good deal of bother with her eyes and her nose, and could no