gets when I shows my card, and they do say we won't get that--only
quarter soon. I'd like to get at that KAYSER! I'd smash him up, I
would!" She said this in the kindest, most benign way, with a smile
as nearly caressing as a smile without front teeth can be. "He'd
come short off if I got to him! And he deserves it, I'm sure," she
concluded, as she departed--with the matches....

A long walk over the Cornish cliffs in the gusty North wind from
the Atlantic had made me drowsy, and as I sat before the fire my
thoughts wandered from Russian politics and the Italian situation
to Millie--and the "KAYSER": Millie, who was short of stature and
round-backed, who showed her fifty-odd years unflinchingly to the
world; Millie with her felt slippers and her overall and coarse hands;
Millie, the possessor of a sugar-card--and the mighty War Lord, stern
and implacable, trying to subdue the world to his will. And Millie
only wished she could get near him to smash him up--"the KAYSER would
come short off."...

* * * * *

The lamp-lit cottage room faded; the sound of November winds and
swirling leaves outside died away. For a moment I peered through
a greyish-blue moving mist--it might have been cigarette smoke;
gradually I distinguished forms and colours beyond; then the fog
lifted and I looked upon an electrically-lighted room, with the
aspect of an office _de luxe_. There were telephones and file cases,
typewriters and all the appurtenances of business operations; the
furniture was massive and handsome, and carpets and hangings had every
appearance of magnificence and costliness.