She had the greatest devotion for her brother, a devotion which Mr. Petersen fancied was not quite appreciated. He was so formal with the affectionate little soul. If she succeeded in kissing him good-night or good-morning, he would turn scarlet and actually frown at her. He never returned a caress, never spoke a tender word to her. He seemed rather to avoid her. He was willing enough to read aloud, but if she interrupted him, and wanted to chat a bit, he lost his temper. “Do you want me to read or _not_?” he would ask, menacingly. Sombre and inscrutable, he withdrew into himself, disregarding even Mr. Petersen’s always renewed offers of friendship. He treated Mr. Petersen with a respectful deference which would have been grotesque if he had not been so obviously sincere. Sandra he loved passionately. It surprised Mr. Petersen to hear him upbraiding Minnie for her carelessness with the child. Her food, her clothes, her manners. He was always saying that she should be taken to church, and taught what he called “decent ideas,” and Minnie always promised to comply when she grew stronger. She was invariably propitiating toward her brother, as toward someone she had wronged.... II The War broke out. With very little effect upon Brownsville Landing. “Let them fight it out,” was the prevailing opinion; it was also stated positively that none of the nations had any clear idea of its aims or why it was involved. Even the Belgians were fools, who had rushed into war for no reason. There was a certain amount of awfully sentimental sympathy for the “Belgian babies,” but it wasn’t very effective. The Brownsville Landing natives looked upon the whole affair as a colossal folly, in which all the participants were equally guilty; the British perhaps a bit more reprehensible than the others. The old families, brought up on flamboyant traditions of “1776,” looked upon the British with scorn and dislike, the Irish element with positive hatred, and the great mass of aliens, with their obscure and vague affiliations, swallowed docilely the German propaganda fed to them. There was a wide-spread conviction that the Germans were invincible, if not superhuman, with amazing scientific devices impossible to resist. A sort of laboratory witchcraft, “secrets” and “discoveries” without limit. France was degenerate and vitiated; England gross, slothful, devoid of patriotism, Russia a farce; the whole affair wouldn’t last long. To Mr. Petersen, the European, the outbreak was of immense significance; it was the falling of Damocles’ sword. He read the papers avidly. He was not partisan; he felt nothing but the passionate interest of an onlooker observing a mortal struggle between equally unpleasant adversaries. A struggle among capitalists. With the poor man dying, bleeding, suffering, whether victor or conqueror. He shook his head over the fate of the Continent.