"Colonel Hampton," Miss Sallie, as was her habit, took the offensive, "what do you mean, sir!" "Mean enough, and happened enough!" The cane again added emphasis. "Those German vipers have torpedoed another of our ships! The de-humanized outcasts, the blood-crazed toads, have wantonly destroyed more American lives! I tell you, m'em, our President is getting damned tired of it, and we'll have war as certain as your tulips are sure to be the fairest in our proud city, m'em!" The cheeks of the little ladies flushed at this dull prophecy, but for quite a minute the three remained silent. "Mercy, I hope not," Miss Veemie sighed at last--meaning the war, of course. "It's terrible!" "And peace can be terrible," the Colonel thundered. "A country that buys peace at the price of dishonor is no better than a frump who sells her soul for gewgaws and furbalows! When posterity shall read of how the diseased mind of a single lunatic has stabbed history's richest pages with a sword of murder, rapacity and lust, it will turn a lip of contempt toward every nation that stood upon a vacuous neutrality. To hell with neutrality, when a madman stalks abroad!" Miss Veemie now felt that she had been silenced for the rest of time, and Miss Sallie's delicate hands, incongruously housed in heavy garden gloves, became expressive of horrified amazement. "What?" he demanded, looking more than ever furious. The little ladies jumped, and Miss Sallie made haste to say: "Why--why nothing." He eyed them for a moment; not suspiciously, but with anger at everything in the universe--themselves, perhaps, excepted. "Where's Jeb?" he asked. "He went into the country again with his rifle this morning," Miss Sallie answered. "He feels as you do, Colonel, that the time has come to strike and we must be preparing for it." "But I wish you'd speak to him," Miss Veemie imploringly added. "He's bent on getting ready and being among the first, if the time comes, and--and----" "And he'll do it in splendid style, rest assured of it, m'em! Jeb will make a fine soldier!--he comes from a line of soldiers!" Tears filled Miss Veemie's eyes. "We've never seriously thought that Jeb----" she began, but could get no farther and relapsed into a sorrowful contemplation of the tulip bed. "There, there; I know, I know," the old gentleman interrupted gently. "I know how you feel about him; I know how you've both been more than mothers to him!" "We've done our best," there was a tightness in Miss Sallie's voice. "He never remembered his own mother, and was so little when dear brother Jebediah died." "I know, I know," he murmured. "How old is Jeb?" "Twenty-six." Another silence fell upon them. Then the Colonel sighed, turned and started on his way downtown, still muttering to himself as he went: