"I did not send this letter as I expected to. Mr. Laurence advised us to mail no letters until after the mobilization is well under way--says the tax on transportation is so heavy that the mails are held up. There is great difficulty even in getting Brussels by telephone or telegraph, and we've had no papers for three days.
"You see, I am still at Dinant, though we will leave in a few hours--if nothing happens! We were held by an incident of mobilization. Sunday afternoon while we were in a shop buying some fruit, a man came in hurriedly, leading a little boy and girl. He wanted the woman to take them while he was gone. Their mother was dead, he said. He had no one. The woman cried. She couldn't, she said; she had her own--her husband must go. She must keep the shop. How could she do it--how could she--and she appealed to me. The poor fellow looked so wretched and the children so pretty that Henry, who has the kindest heart in the world, said, 'See here, let _me_ have the kids. I'll find somebody to keep them.' 'But I have no money,' the man said. 'Well, never mind--I'll see to that,' and, would you believe it? that man marched off leaving Henry Laurence with two solemn little Belgians. Well, we had to stay in Dinant forty-eight hours longer than we'd expected while Henry found a place for them. We had such fun! He found a dear old lady in a nice little house, and everybody said she'd be kind to them, and Henry arranged at the bank for weekly payments as long as the father has to be away. He could do that without trouble because his firm has a branch in Brussels, and a man here handles their goods. We're going this evening to say good-by and then north to Namur, which is only fifteen miles away. We follow the Meuse--it will be a lovely ride.
"An awful, a wicked thing has happened. I can't believe it is true. Last night when we reached our hotel here, the first thing we heard was that Germany had crossed the Belgian frontier. Mr. Laurence and Henry grew quite angry with the proprietor--whom they know very well, as the firm has offices here--for repeating such a rumor, but he insisted he was right. Germany couldn't do such a thing, Henry insisted. The man only shrugged and said what everybody says here: '_Guillaume est la cause._' ('William did it.') You hear the peasants in the fields say the same thing. They don't say the kaiser, or the emperor, or William II; just William--as one might speak about a rich and powerful relative that he didn't like or approve of but had to obey.