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 at 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 . Carl wrote that it had been raining for weeks and that nights in the trenches always made him think of the night of long ago when he did penance in the graveyard for running away from Henry Warren 's ghost . Carl 's letters are always full of jokes and bits of fun . They had a great rat-hunt the night before he wrote -- spearing rats with their bayonets -- and he got the best bag and won the prize . He has a tame rat that knows him and sleeps in his pocket at night . Rats do n't worry Carl as they do some people -- he was always chummy with all little beasts .
He says he is making a study of the habits of the trench rat and means XXXXX write a treatise on it some day that will make him famous .
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