"our poor cold boys in the trenches," but Gerhardt no longer sought out little jobs to do in the houses of his neighbours. Mrs. Gerhardt thought that he "fancied" they would not like it. It was early in that spring that she took a deaf aunt to live with them, the wife of her mother's brother, no blood-relation, but the poor woman had nowhere else to go; so David was put to sleep on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room because she "couldn't refuse the poor thing." And then, of an April afternoon, while she was washing the household sheets, her neighbour, Mrs. Clirehugh, a little spare woman all eyes, cheekbones, hair, and decision, came in breathless and burst out: "Oh! Mrs. Gerhardt, 'ave you 'eard? They've sunk the _Loositania_! Has I said to Will: Isn't it horful?" Mrs. Gerhardt, with her round arms dripping soap-suds, answered: "What a dreadful thing! The poor drowning people! Dear! Oh dear!" "Oh! Those Huns! I'd shoot the lot, I would!" "They _are_ wicked!" Mrs. Gerhardt echoed: "That was a dreadful thing to do!" But it was not till Gerhardt came in at five o'clock, white as a sheet, that she perceived how this dreadful catastrophe affected them. "I have been called a German," were the first words he uttered; "Dollee, I have been called a German." "Well, so you are, my dear," said Mrs. Gerhardt. "You do not see," he answered, with a heat and agitation which surprised her. "I tell you this _Lusitania_ will finish our business. They will have me. They will take me away from you all. Already the papers have: 'Intern all the Huns.'" He sat down at the kitchen table and buried his face in hands still grimy from his leather work. Mrs. Gerhardt stood beside him, her eyes unnaturally big. "But Max," she said, "what has it to do with you? You couldn't help it. Max!" Gerhardt looked up, his white face, broad in the brow and tapering to a thin chin, seemed all distraught. "What do they care for that? Is my name Max Gerhardt? What do they care if I hate the war? I am a German. That's enough. You will see." "Oh!" murmured Mrs. Gerhardt, "they won't be so unjust." Gerhardt reached up and caught her chin in his hand, and for a moment those two pairs of eyes gazed, straining, into each other. Then he said: "I don't want to be taken, Dollee. What shall I do away from you and the children? I don't want to be taken, Dollee." Mrs. Gerhardt, with a feeling of terror and a cheerful smile, answered: "You mustn't go fancyin' things, Max. I'll make you a nice cup of tea. Cheer up, old man! Look on the bright side!" But Gerhardt lapsed into the silence which of late she had begun to dread.