They entered the room, donned dust-caps and aprons that they had brought with them, and entered on the work with assumed zest. They were in Miss Yvonne's room on the ground floor, and the dismantling process had begun to be complete. The bed was taken down, the bookshelves emptied and their contents piled on the floor, and the furniture was shrouded in sacking. Little remained to be packed, except the contents of a big closet built into one wall. Miss Yvonne was elsewhere, so the young folks had the room to themselves. "Isn't the weather awful!" groaned Carol, for the second time in ten minutes. "The news in the paper is worse!" commented Louis. "Oh, what is it?" chorused the girls. "None of us have had time to read the paper to-day." "The Germans are demolishing Belgium. They've entered France at several points and are bound straight for Calais and Paris. It seems as if nothing could stop them. They're walking away with everything. They're hideously prepared for this, and not one of the other nations is. It makes my blood boil! Oh, if I could only _do_ something, instead of just going over to France and watching the show! But I suppose Monsieur wouldn't hear of it." "Louis, you mustn't get into this fight. You're too young!" exclaimed Sue. "Yes, that's what he says," muttered Louis, viciously scrubbing a book with a dust-cloth. "But I'm seventeen; and I don't agree with him. I've lost all interest in life, anyhow. Why shouldn't I go in and smash a few of the enemy's heads?" The three girls shuddered, but did not answer. "There!" cried the Imp, glad to change the subject. "I've finished these books. Now what else is there to do here, Louis?" "Aunt Yvonne said that closet was to be emptied and all the things piled on the floor." The Imp straightway dived into the closet, calling back: "I'll hand the things out, and you all put them where they are to go." She began hurling out packages and bundles in an endless stream, for it seemed as if the closet had been used for years as a storage-place, and that the contents had seldom been moved. "My, but there are a lot of them!" coughed the Imp, choking with dust. "Yes, Aunt Yvonne said she was rather ashamed of this closet," said Louis. "She's used it as a catch-all for years, and most of these bundles are things she never has any use for, yet won't under any circumstances give or throw away." "We have the same kind of a closet at home," remarked Carol. "Mother says she doesn't know how she'd get along without it,--I mean the kind of place where you stow things away that you hardly expect to touch again." "So have we," echoed Sue. They worked for a time in silence. At last the Imp, dusty and cobwebby, tossed out a final bundle, with the remark: "That's the last, I guess, except some scraps of wrapping-paper and so on. I'll just look among these to see that there's nothing more." They heard her grubbing about for a moment or two, and then came a stifled exclamation.