Aunt Jane's Nieces in The Red Cross
The poise of her girlish figure was gracious and dignified as the bearing of a queen.
"Morning, Cousin Beth," said Patsy cheerily.
"Good morning, my dear," and then, with a trace of anxiety in her tone: "What is the news, Uncle John?"
The little man had ignored Patsy's first question, but now he answered absently, his eyes still fixed upon the newspaper:
"Why, they're going to build another huge skyscraper on Broadway, at Eleventh, and I see the political pot is beginning to bubble all through the Bronx, although—"
"Stuff and nonsense, Uncle!" exclaimed Patsy. "Beth asked for news, not for gossip."
"The news of the war, Uncle John," added Beth, buttering her toast.
"Oh; the war, of course," he said, turning over the page of the morning paper. "It ought to be the Allies' day, for the Germans won yesterday. No—by cracky, Beth—the Germans triumph again; they've captured Maubeuge. What do you think of that?"
Patsy gave a little laugh.
"Not knowing where Maubeuge is," she remarked, "my only thought is that something is wrong with the London press bureau. Perhaps the cables got crossed—or short circuited or something. They don't usually allow the Germans to win two days in succession."
"Don't interrupt, please," said Beth, earnestly. "This is too important a matter to be treated lightly. Read us the article, Uncle. I was afraid Maubeuge would be taken."
Patsy accepted her cousin's rebuke with her accustomed good nature. Indeed, she listened as intently as Beth to the thrilling account of the destruction of Maubeuge, and her blue eyes became quite as serious as the brown ones of her cousin when the tale of dead and wounded was recounted.
"Isn't it dreadful!" cried Beth, clasping her hands together impulsively.
"Yes," nodded her uncle, "the horror of it destroys the interest we naturally feel in any manly struggle for supremacy."
"This great war is no manly struggle," observed Patsy with a toss of her head. "It is merely wholesale murder by a band of selfish diplomats."
"Tut-tut!
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In a village there lived two men who had the self-same name. Both were named Claus. But one of them owned four horses, and the other owned only one horse; so to distinguish between them people called the man who had four horses Big Claus, and the man who had only one horse Little Claus. Now I'll tell you what happened to these two, for this is a true story.
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