“How long?” said Aunt Sophy, quietly.  She had a mayonnaise spoon and a leaf of lettuce in her hand at the time, and still she did not look comic.

“I’m crazy about her,” said Eugene.  “We’re crazy about each other.  We’re going to be married.”

Aunt Sophy listened for the reassuring sound of Adele’s spoons and plates in the kitchen.  She came forward.  “Now, listen—­” she began.

“I love him,” said Julia Gold, dramatically.  “I love him!”

Except that it was very white and, somehow, old looking, Aunt Sophy’s face was as benign as always.  “Now, look here, Julia, my girl.  That isn’t love and you know it.  I’m an old maid, but I know what love is when I see it.  I’m ashamed of you, Julia.  Sensible woman like you.  Hugging and kissing a boy like that, and old enough to be his mother, pretty near.”

“Now, look here, Aunt Soph!  I’m fond of you but if you’re going to talk that way—­Why, she’s wonderful.  She’s taught me what it means to really—­”

“Oh, my land!” Aunt Sophy sat down, looking, suddenly, very sick and old.

And then, from the kitchen, Adele’s clear young voice:  “Heh!  What’s the idea!  I’m not going to do all the work.  Where’s everybody?”

Aunt Sophy started up again.  She came up to them and put a hand—­a capable, firm, steadying hand on the arm of each.  The woman drew back but the boy did not.

“Will you promise me not to do anything for a week?  Just a week!  Will you promise me?  Will you?”

“Are you going to tell Father?”

“Not for a week if you’ll promise not to see each other in that week.  No, I don’t want to send you away, Julia, I don’t want to—­You’re not a bad girl.  It’s just—­he’s never had—­at home they never gave him a chance.  Just a week, Julia.  Just a week, Eugene.  We can talk things over then.”

Adele’s footsteps coming from the kitchen.

“Quick!”

“I promise,” said Eugene.  Julia said nothing.

“Well, really,” said Adele, from the doorway, “you’re a nervy lot, sitting around while I slave in the kitchen.  ’Gene, see if you can open the olives with this fool can opener.  I tried.”

There is no knowing what she expected to do in that week, Aunt Sophy; what miracle she meant to perform.  She had no plan in her mind.  Just hope.  She looked strangely shrunken and old, suddenly.  But when, three days later, the news came that America was to go into the war she knew that her prayers were answered.

Flora was beside herself.  “Eugene won’t have to go.  He isn’t quite twenty-one, thank God!  And by the time he is it will be over.  Surely.”  She was almost hysterical.

Eugene was in the room.  Aunt Sophy looked at him and he looked at Aunt Sophy.  In her eyes was a question.  In his was the answer.  They said nothing.  The next day Eugene enlisted.  In three days he was gone.  Flora took to her bed.  Next day Adele, a faint, unwonted colour marking her cheeks, walked into her mother’s bedroom and stood at the side of the recumbent figure.  Her father, his hands clasped behind him, was pacing up and down, now and then kicking a cushion that had fallen to the floor.  He was chewing a dead cigar, one side of his face twisted curiously over the cylinder in his mouth so that he had a sinister and crafty look.