Molly flushed indignantly, but before she could reply, Mrs. Chester called them all to come in to dinner. The Chesters were charming hosts, and before dinner was over all their guests were feeling very much at home. Even Jerry--who was generally painfully shy with strangers--quite forgot to be embarrassed, and found himself sending Molly--who sat next to him--off into irrepressible giggles over the story of a school scrap, in which he had figured as one of the chief delinquents. They were all so happy and merry; there was nothing but the uniforms of the two young men to remind them that things were not all as they used to be. But it was impossible to keep the conversation altogether away from the war, and before the meal was half over Mr. Chester and Stephen were discussing submarines and the possibility of a German blockade. “Not much danger,” Stephen declared confidently. “When Uncle Sam once takes a hand things are pretty sure to go right.” At which piece of “Americanism” everybody laughed except Gretel, who suddenly became aware of the fact that Mr. Jimmy Fairfax was looking at her again in that same sharp, almost suspicious manner that she had noticed once before. “He doesn’t like me,” she said to herself. “I suppose he’s one of those people who hate everything German.” Just then her ear was caught by something Molly was saying to her cousin. “Is it true, Steve, that they have passed a law forbidding Germans to come near the water-fronts?” “Quite true, and a very good thing, too,” young Cranston answered. “It’s about time we began to look after things a little better in this country. We have been altogether too lenient. I don’t suppose people have any idea of the amount of spy work that has been going on right under our very noses.” Gretel remembered what her brother had told her, and, for some unaccountable reason, her heart began to beat rather uncomfortably fast. It was foolish, of course, but somehow she couldn’t help being almost glad she had not been able to keep that appointment with Fräulein. After dinner they all went out on the piazza and watched the lights in the harbor until some one proposed to sail up the river in the motor-boat. The suggestion was eagerly accepted, and in less than ten minutes the whole party, with the exception of Mrs. Chester, who was tired, and Frank, who, being only eleven, was still considered too young to be up after nine o’clock, were gliding up the river in the Chesters’ comfortable launch. “This is the Thames, where they have the big Harvard-Yale boat-race every June,” Molly told Gretel. “There won’t be any race this year, though, on account of the war. Steve was on the Harvard crew last year, and it was tremendously exciting.” Gretel could not repress a sigh. Those boys seemed so young, so much, more fitted for college boat-races than for the grim work of war. “Were you sorry to leave college?” she asked Stephen, impulsively.