Phil was coughing patiently, his face hidden in a pungent reek of turf smoke.
"I am afther blowin' it up, Miss Gheena, till there isn't a puff in me two cheeks," he explained; "but someone was at our little cranny of turf, and this same is moist on us."
To boil a kettle with bunches of heather requires constant scurryings to and fro, outbreaks of fiery flame being varied by smouldering ashes. Mocking songs from the kettle, followed by glum silences which it refused to break.
Basil Stafford, his eyes full of tears, thought almost regretfully of the tea-party at Castle Freyne, and it was Darby at last who hauled a now stormily bubbling kettle from a roaring blaze, and was then heartily abused because he had forgotten to heat the tea-pot.
Immediately the tea was made the turf glowed to a fiery red and the smoke was no more.
Basil Stafford drank smoked strong tea in silence. His glasses lay beside him, and more than once he looked through them out at the silver-grey sea.
"Uncle Richard says they suspect bases here"—Gheena looked along the low cliffs—"for the submarines; people supplying them with petrol. No one would; they couldn't."
"Money," said Stafford, "tempts some people greatly. The Germans pay well, I am told," he added a little hurriedly.
"Tom Knox got his commission yesterday." Gheena waved her tea-cup. "He is all khaki and importance. How anyone who could go can stay!" She looked fierily at Stafford.
"Some people cannot help themselves," he said apologetically.