“They could have the equal of the whole British Army killed three times over and scarcely know it had happened.  They’re 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 not have to worry.”

“Because we’re in for a stiff war!” cried Cissie, and Direck perceived he had blundered.

“Because we may be invaded!” she said, and Mr. Direck’s sense of error deepened.