'Well, I could just see the whole thing, me standing there reading an'
all, and when I'd get through I could almost hear the applause. They'd
some of 'em have on gloves, you know, so it would sound softer an' more
genteel-like than just common bare-hand clapping. Well, it takes time
for a country dressmaker to save. It took me twenty years. I did have
most enough once, but then my sister was taken sick an' what I'd saved
had to go for her. But I just gritted my teeth an' commenced again, and
at last this spring I had enough, an' I joined a party and went. Ours
wasn't a regular party. It was just a professor an' his wife who were
goin' anyhow, an' would take a couple of ladies with them, so there were
just the four of us. Well, we traveled for a month or more, an' you
better b'lieve I stretched my eyes to see all there was to see. An'
then, all at once, the world just tipped itself right over an' went
crazy.
'We were in Brussels when it came. The professor was sure everything
would quiet down in a little bit, an' he said we'd better stay right
there. And anyhow, it wasn't easy to get away. It was all just awful,
with one country after another slipping in. Only things came so quick a
person didn't hardly have time to catch their breath an' think "how
awful," 'fore something worse was jumping right on top of it. Well, we
stayed and stayed, till at last the Germans came. It certainly was a
sight to see 'em--but I ain't goin' to tell about that, I'm just goin'
to skip right along to what I set out to tell.
'The professor and his wife had left their only child, a mighty sickly
little thing, with her grandmother in Paris, and when things got so bad
they were pretty near distracted to get to her. Well, one morning the
professor came in and told us he'd run across a young American, a Mr.
Grenville, who was being sent to Paris on some special diplomatic
business. He had a big automobile, and he thought maybe he could get it
fixed to take us all, too. It looked like a mighty crazy thing to do,
but there wasn't any holdin' the professor an' his wife on account of
their child, and me and the other lady, we was afraid to be left behind.
Well, after a lot of runnin' around from one official to another, they
did finally get it all fixed for us to go, an' the next day we started
out with an American flag on the front of our car. Of course we were
stopped a lot of times and all our papers gone through and everything,
but each time they let us go on account of Mr. Grenville bein' a United
States official. We'd started early, an' by noon we'd come a right smart
piece, an' about that time we began to hear firing on in front. Did you
ever hear them big guns?' she broke off to ask, her childlike eyes
questioning me.