“Where’s Papa?” André asked.
Marie looked annoyed. “He’s gone off with Victor Lescot. That Raoul Cotein is making trouble again. Now he says our cows broke into his pasture. What an old weasel he is! Even the Germans behave better.”
Later, with supper over, she paused suddenly, and raised her hand for André to be silent.
Breaking the stillness, the weird wail of air-raid sirens rose far away.
Marie looked tired. And there was fear in her eyes when she heard the sirens, which meant that another air raid was beginning.
“Again tonight,” she sighed, “and so early. It is not yet ten o’clock.”
She went to the kitchen window and made sure the black curtains let no light through.
“You run upstairs, André, and see that the curtains there are tight. And stay with Mother,” she ordered.
Mme. Gagnon had been ill for several weeks. Now she lay in her big bed upstairs, nearly asleep.
She opened her eyes as the sirens died away and then began again.