AMERICA

There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood out, and it had all the effect of a revelation.

There.  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 L200,—­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.