“The poor innocent salt!” she exclaimed.
And no doubt that also was chalked up against her.
It was Christmas time, and two friends came down to stay at the cottage with the Somers. Those were the days before America joined the Allies. The man friend arrived with a whole parcel of American dainties, buckwheat meal and sweet potatoes and maple sugar: the woman friend brought a good basket of fruit. They were to have a Christmas in the lonely cottage in spite of everything.
It was Christmas Eve, and a pouring black wet night outside. Nowhere can it be so black as on the edge of a Cornish moor, above the western sea, near the rocks where the ancient worshippers used to sacrifice. The darkness of menhirs. The American woman friend was crouching at the fire making fudge, the man was away in his room, when a thundering knock at the door. Ah Lord!
The burly police-sergeant, and his bicycle.
“Sorry to trouble you, sir, but is an American, a Mr Monsell, stopping here with you? He is. Can I have a word with him?”
“Yes. Won’t you come in?”
Into the cosy cottage room, with the American girl at the fire, her face flushed with the fudge-making, entered the big, burly ruddy police-sergeant, his black mackintosh-cape streaming wet.
“We give you a terrible lot of trouble, I’m sorry to say,” said Harriet ironically. “What an awful night for you to have to come all these miles. I’m sure it isn’t our doing.”
“No, ma’m, I know that. It’s the doing of people who like to meddle. These military orders, they take some keeping pace with.”