"While you were at school to-day," she said, "the mayor came to tell me to go away, either to Brussels or Antwerp, where, perhaps, I could escape to America." "And what did you say, Aunt Abigail?" the boy asked anxiously. The old maid tossed back her head. "I told them that the little finger of the American minister in Brussels was stronger than Germany a dozen times over. I told him that the United States wasn't looking for trouble, but was perfectly willing to whip any one when necessary. I said we could whip our weight in wild-cats, and we can. "Then he had the nerve to talk the way you talked this morning. He said that the Germans would commit all sorts of horrible atrocities if they broke through Liége. I told him that just as I didn't think the Germans were fools enough to fight with Americans, so I didn't think they were brutes enough to fight against women and children." "What did the mayor say to that?" queried the boy, regretting that he had not heard the discussion. "He didn't tell me I was a fool, but I could see he thought I was, and I didn't tell him he was a fool, but he could see I thought he was, so the matter stopped at that." "But, Aunt Abigail," said Horace, puzzled between the truth in the master's words and the grain of truth in his aunt's ideas, "suppose the army runs amuck and the officers can't control it?" "Then it isn't much of an army," she snapped back. "I hear a lot of talk about discipline. If the officers can't keep the men from turning into savages, the way you and the mayor think they will, then it's time a war came along for somebody to beat sense into their heads. Not that that has anything to do with it. I told your father I'd be here when he came back, and it'll take more than a fight between two of these little European countries--which we could tuck into the State of Texas without noticing it--to make me break my word." Horace realized the ignorant narrowness of his aunt's position. He had often deplored the arrogant Americanism which estranged her foreign friends. It hurt him, sometimes, when his schoolfellows made fun of America's boastfulness and bluff, for he knew that many of their criticisms were just. At the same time, he knew, too, that there were many things in America wherein his country was superior to Europe. And, while he raged inwardly at his aunt's prejudices, he could not but admire her pluck. "Lots of people are leaving to-night," he ventured. "I know. I've been helping them to pack. Some of them have gone with nothing more than the clothes they stood in, others wanted to carry their house, yes, their gardens, too, I reckon, on their backs. Such weeping and making a to-do I never saw. I'm not criticizing any one, understand, only--I stay. Do you want to go?" "No," said Horace, "I stay, too." "Good thing," she said, tartly; "I'd hate to see any nephew of mine show a yellow streak."