“Sure!” said the lady, not murmuring.  “What in time did you think I was going to do?”

Yes, sir; I bet she’s the greatest taker-up—­bar none—­the war has yet produced.  She’s took up France the latest.  I understand they got a society of real workers somewhere that’s trying to house and feed and give medicine and crutches to them poor unfortunates that got in the way of the dear old Fatherland when it took the lid off its Culture and tried to make the world safe—­even for Germans; but I guess this here society gets things over to devastated France without much music or flourishes or uniforms that would interest Genevieve May.

But if that country is to be saved by costume balls of the Allied nations, with Genevieve May being La Belle France in a dress hardly long enough to show three colours, then it needn’t have another uneasy moment.  Genevieve stands ready to do all if she can wear a costume and dance the steps it cost her eight dollars a lesson to learn from one of these slim professionals that looks like a rich college boy.

It was this reckless dancing she’d took up when I first knew her, though she probably goes back far enough to of took up roller skating when that was sprung on an eager world; and I know she got herself talked about in 1892 for wearing bloomers on a bicycle.  But we wasn’t really acquainted till folks begun to act too familiar in public, and call it dancing, and pay eight dollars a lesson to learn something any of ’em that was healthy would of known by instinct at a proper time and place.  Having lots of money, Genevieve May travelled round to the big towns, learning new steps and always taking with her one of these eight-dollar boys, with his hair done like a seal, to make sure she’d learn every step she saw.

She was systematic, that woman.  If she was in Seattle and heard about a new step in San Francisco, she’d be on the train with her instructor in one hour and come back with the new step down pat.  She scandalized Red Gap the year she come to visit her married daughter, Lucille Stultz, by introducing many of these new grips and clinches; but of course that soon wore off.  Seems like we get used to anything in this world after it’s done by well-dressed people a few times.

Then, as I say, these kind-hearted, music-loving Germans, with their strong affection for home life and little ones, started in to shoot the rest of the world up to German standards, and they hadn’t burned more than a dozen towns in Belgium, after shooting the oldest and youngest and sexecuting the women—­I suppose sexecution is what you might call it—­before Genevieve took up the war herself.

Yes, sir—­took it right up; no sooner said than done with her.  It was really all over right then.  The Germans might just as well of begun four years ago to talk about the anarchistic blood-lust of Woodrow Wilson as to wait until they found out the Almighty knows other languages besides German.