You -- or I ? Tell me that . '' `` You were , I admit , '' said Mr. Meredith . `` It 's too late to admit it now , '' said Mrs. Norman , shaking her head , as if to intimate that if John Meredith had admitted it sooner there might have been no war . `` Thank God , England 's navy is ready , '' said the doctor . `` Amen to that , '' nodded Mrs. Norman . `` Bat-blind as most of them were somebody had foresight enough to see to that . '' `` Maybe England 'll manage not to get into trouble over it , '' said Cousin Sophia plaintively . `` I dunno . But I 'm much afraid . '' `` One would suppose that England was in trouble over it already , up to her neck , Sophia Crawford , '' said Susan . `` But your ways of thinking are beyond me and always were . It is my opinion that the British Navy will settle Germany in a jiffy and that we are all getting worked up over nothing . '' Susan spat out the words as if she wanted to convince herself more than anybody else . She had her little store of homely philosophies to guide her through life , but she had nothing to buckler her against the thunderbolts of the week that had just passed . What had an honest , hard-working , Presbyterian old maid of Glen St. Mary to do with a war thousands of miles away ? Susan felt that it was indecent that she should have to be disturbed by it . `` The British army will settle Germany , '' shouted Norman . `` Just wait till it gets into line and the Kaiser will find that real war is a different thing from parading round Berlin with your moustaches cocked up . '' `` Britain has n't got an army , '' said Mrs. Norman emphatically .
`` You need n't glare at me , XXXXX .
Bat-blind Britain British Crawford Germany Norman Presbyterian Susan moustaches war