That is what I call effective argument , Mrs. Dr. dear . ' `` Gertrude and I could n't rest after all that . We walked the floor until our legs gave out and we had to sit down perforce . Mother knitted away as steadily as clockwork and pretended to be calm and serene -- pretended so well that we were all deceived and envious until the next day , when I caught her ravelling out four inches of her sock . She had knit that far past where the heel should have begun ! `` It was twelve before father came home . He stood in the doorway and looked at us and we looked at him . We did not dare ask him what the news was . Then he said that it was Laurier who had ` done nothing ' in the West , and that the Union Government was in with a big majority . Gertrude clapped her hands . I wanted to laugh and cry , mother 's eyes flashed with their old-time starriness and Susan emitted a queer sound between a gasp and a whoop . `` This will not comfort the Kaiser much , ' she said . `` Then we went to bed , but were too excited to sleep . Really , as Susan said solemnly this morning , ` Mrs. Dr. dear , I think politics are too strenuous for women . ' '' 31st December 1917 `` Our fourth War Christmas is over . We are trying to gather up some courage wherewith to face another year of it . Germany has , for the most part , been victorious all summer . And now they say she has all her troops from the Russian front ready for a ` big push ' in the spring . Sometimes it seems to me that we just can not live through the winter waiting for that . `` I had a great batch of letters from overseas this week .
Shirley is XXXXX the front now , too , and writes about it all as coolly and matter-of-factly as he used to write of football at Queen 's .
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