Mrs. Kesteven gave a very chic gasp, and almost leaped from the wall into the sea below. And Val, realising what had happened, hastily leaned forward and in her bad French, always ten times worse when she was excited, cried:
"Mais--vous faisez une erreur, monsieur."
The poor man, horrified as Mrs. Kesteven herself, blurted out a throaty:
"Parr-don! Je vous demands parr-don, mesdames," and fled.
Val said her French did it--that wonderful phrase "faisez une erreur," quite unknown to the French grammar. But Harriott declared her suspicion that the quality of her woollen stockings was the cause of the poor man's panic.
"I imagine the French Comtesse whom that pinch was meant for is not much addicted to Jaeger and flannel lingerie," she said with a grim glint of humour in her eye. "Anyway it is a lesson to us not to sit out alone on dark nights."
Next morning there was a basket of grapes in the boat.
"This is really beginning to go a little too far," declared Val. "Either some one is robbing the Admiral's garden and wants to drag us into the affair as accomplices, or else there is an impression abroad that we are in need of food and clothing."
She and Harriott gravely discussed the point as to whether it would be better to put up a public notice by the wayside, or call in the gendarmes.
"Oh, mother!" cried Kitty in a voice of mingled consternation and impatience, and wriggled Mrs. Kesteven into her bedroom where she could harangue her without ribald interruption from Val. The minute Haidee got Val alone she said furiously: