She carried it martially with her into the great kitchen, and placed it in a corner. The sun itself was hardly up, but the children brought the flag out into the firelight and old Marie was jubilant. The wonderful idea! The great brain of mademoiselle! She fussed almost happily over the simmering skillet of milk. But the great brain was pondering apart in the lessening shadows. Better the American flag, if she could manage it. She would beg an old blue smock of Theophile's, for she had nothing herself. Those wretched stars! It would take her a long morning; and she felt convinced that this day's sun would not rise peacefully to the zenith. This thing she had made was a lie. Incalculable harm could be done by assuming a badge you had no right to--incalculable harm to those who had the right. She was mortally afraid; but she would not do anything in pure panic. That would make it worse for every one in the end. An American flag: it must be made. How many states were there? She had no notion, but she fancied they were as the sands of the sea. It would take a woman all day to cut out those stars and sew them to a blue field hacked out of Theophile's smock. And what a makeshift banner, in the end! Even if the enemy politely waited for her to finish it, would they not detect it at once? Was not that the kind of thing every German knew better than she--how many little silly stars there were, safe and far away, sending senators to Washington? A sullen tide of mirth was let loose in her far below the surface. Here she was, quivering with terror, with a lot of foolish livestock on her hands--livestock that she could not give up to slaughter as if they had been the sheep that they really were. Miss Stanley caught up one of the children to her lap and fed it great spoonfuls of warm milk--choking it hopelessly. Luckily the mother was too apathetic to reproach her. She could not even feed a child without wetting it all over! Disgusted, she put the child down again. It whimpered, and the mother, roused, moved over to it. Miss Stanley looked at her cup. Chocolate--no coffee, for the coffee was gone. Coffee might have cleared her brain, but this mess would do nothing for her. Still, she drank it. And gradually, as their hunger was appeased, they crept about her. Even those who did not move their chairs turned and faced her. She could not meet so many eyes. She had nothing to do with them--these tellers of old wives' tales, who expected her to deliver them from the horrors their own lips had fabricated. Why did they stare at her as if she might have an idol's power over events? Whispering, almost inaudibly, their strung and beaded prayers, yet blasphemously looking to her!