At the same time, she inquired why it was that I had stood for a quarter of an hour on that doormat, clasping feverishly to my chest a pair of satin slippers and a bath towel, and clinging pathetically to a bedroom candlestick; when obviously any candle would have blown out had I attempted to light it, and the bedroom slippers would have been more usefully employed on my shoeless feet; while as for the bath towel. . . !
The coffee came at that moment. I remembered that some time ago the kitchen had been very interested in an article in one of the dailies, giving various directions as to what should be done in the case of bombs overhead. I forget a good deal of it, but I remember you had to lay mattresses all over the top floors before you came downstairs, and you had to dip a cloth in hyposulphate of something, and hold it to your nose as you came down to seek a place of safety.
The servants were rather taken with the mattress idea, said how simple it was, and that, as they had five mattresses between them, they would cover a good deal of floor space. I even generously offered them the two off my own bed, if they would come down and fetch them as soon as the Zepps were heard, so long as they undertook to place them carefully above my head.
When Abigail brought in the trays, I asked how many mattresses she had laid down.
“I never gave ’em a thought,” she owned up; “my two legs seemed all that mattered, for I was sure I saw the Zeppelin-thing looking straight in at my bedroom window—such sauce!”
“Untutored imagination again!” murmured Ursula in my ear.
Nervous little Mrs. Brash said that was just the difficulty; when it actually came to the point you could think of nothing that you ought to remember. Wouldn’t it be well to talk the subject over and decide a few things—merely to be prepared—now that there was a group of us together.
Miss Thresher, who loves the importance of being in any sort of office, enthused over the idea; said we had better have a committee meeting there and then; to be forewarned was to be forearmed, she told us, with an impressive air of wisdom. She said she would be Minute Secretary, and we must draw up schedules stating definitely and clearly what a woman ought to do, first by way of preparation beforehand, and secondly when the crisis actually arrived.
Miss Quirker endorsed this, and remarked in an aggrieved tone (in my direction) that she should have thought the women’s papers would have dealt comprehensively with so important a subject long ago. She added, however, that she thought “crisis” was far too respectable a name to give them; had she not been a staunch Churchwoman, she would have called them something far more vividly appropriate. I didn’t hear the end of this, because I slipped away to find the man of the house, as I had heard him return indoors.