Mrs. Wheeler rocked and fanned, forgetting the kitchen and the cucumbers as if they had never been.  Her tired body was resting, and her mind, which was never tired, was occupied with the account of early religious foundations under the Merovingian kings.  Her eyes were always agreeably employed when they rested upon the sunburned neck and catapult shoulders of her red-headed son.

Claude read faster and faster until he stopped with a gasp.

“Mother, there are pages of kings!  We’ll read that some other time.  I want to find out what it’s like now, and whether it’s going to have any more history.”  He ran his finger up and down the columns.  “Here, this looks like business.

“Defences:  Paris, in a recent German account of the greatest fortresses of the world, possesses three distinct rings of defences”—­here he broke off.  “Now what do you think of that?  A German account, and this is an English book!  The world simply made a mistake about the Germans all along.  It’s as if we invited a neighbour over here and showed him our cattle and barns, and all the time he was planning how he would come at night and club us in our beds.”

Mrs. Wheeler passed her hand over her brow.  “Yet we have had so many German neighbours, and never one that wasn’t kind and helpful.”

“I know it.  Everything Mrs. Erlich ever told me about Germany made me want to go there.  And the people that sing all those beautiful songs about women and children went into Belgian villages and—­”

“Don’t, Claude!” his mother put out her hands as if to push his words back.  “Read about the defences of Paris; that’s what we must think about now.  I can’t but believe there is one fort the Germans didn’t put down in their book, and that it will stand.  We know Paris is a wicked city, but there must be many God-fearing people there, and God has preserved it all these years.  You saw in the paper how the churches are full all day of women praying.”  She leaned forward and smiled at him indulgently.  “And you believe those prayers will accomplish nothing, son?”

Claude squirmed, as he always did when his mother touched upon certain subjects.  “Well, you see, I can’t forget that the Germans are praying, too.  And I guess they are just naturally more pious than the French.”  Taking up the book he began once more:  “In the low ground again, at the narrowest part of the great loop of the Marne,” etc.

Claude and his mother had grown familiar with the name of that river, and with the idea of its strategic importance, before it began to stand out in black headlines a few days later.

The fall ploughing had begun as usual.  Mr. Wheeler had decided to put in six hundred acres of wheat again.  Whatever happened on the other side of the world, they would need bread.  He took a third team himself and went into the field every morning to help Dan and Claude.  The neighbours said that nobody but the Kaiser had ever been able to get Nat Wheeler down to regular work.