"Oh, England! England will protest a little, and preach a little, and take care not to get a scratch."
"Don’t you be too sure of that," said Kenneth, rather warmly.
"No? You think otherwise?" Hellwig was smiling still. "Well, we shall see. Perhaps you have private information?"
His mocking smile and ironical tone brought a flush to Kenneth’s cheeks.
"I don’t want any private information to know what England will do," cried the boy.
"True, the public information is conclusive. England is helpless; she suffers from an internal complaint; she is breaking up."
"That will do, Kurt," said Finkelstein, anticipating an explosive word from Kenneth, who was quick-tempered, and apt to fall out with Hellwig. "Really, Ken, you will be safer at home, and if you don’t go now you will lose your chance; all the trains will be required for the troops."
"I’d rather wait a little longer," replied Kenneth. "It’s all so interesting. I’ve never seen a mobilisation before."
"It will do him good to see how we manage things in Germany," said Hellwig. "And since England will remain neutral, he will run no risk."
Finkelstein, easygoing and indolent where business was not concerned, yielded the point.
"Very well," he said. "Do as you please. But I recommend you to pack up in readiness for a sudden departure. For my part, I hope Kurt is right; I think of my business."
"We all think of our business," said Hellwig, with a slight stress upon the pronoun.
"Our business--yes," said Finkelstein. "We shall all suffer, I fear. But if it is as in ’70----"
Kenneth did not wait to hear further discussion on the chances of the war. Remarking that he would see the others at lunch, he hurried away into the street. Awakened very early that morning by the rumbling of carts and the tramp of horses, he had got up and gone out, to watch the continual passage of regiments of infantry and cavalry, batteries of artillery, pontoon trains, commissariat and ammunition wagons, through the streets and the railway station. Everything was swift and systematic; the troops, though a little hazy as to their destination, were in high spirits; the war would soon be over, they assured their anxious friends.
It was all very new and exciting to Kenneth Amory, who had only vague memories of the English mobilisation for the South African war, when he was a child of four. His father had founded, with Max Finkelstein, an Anglo-German business which had attained great dimensions. Finkelstein controlled the German headquarters at Cologne; Amory looked after things in London. The latter died suddenly in the winter of 1912, leaving his son Kenneth, then nearly seventeen years of age, to the guardianship of Finkelstein, in whom he justly placed implicit confidence.