"It's horrible to think that Mère Perigord and the children should be exposed out of ignorance!" Helen sprang past the General and up the stairs.
"This is where I intervene!" said Phil, starting after her.
"I told you women were the very devil under fire," murmured the General. "No sense of fear like men."
"And why not I?" Henriette, too, was going.
But the General stopped the way.
"No, young woman," he said. "I'm looking after you and if I had been your mother——"
"You'd have spanked me!" put in Henriette, making a charming grimace and dropping back into her seat against the wine bin. "Helen will be the death of Cousin Phil yet," she added. "She's in an awful state of nerves."
"Seems perfectly normal," remarked the General. "I've always liked Helen," he added tartly.
When Helen and Phil came out into the village street not a soul was in sight. The little community of peasants' houses with its old church was as dead as Pompeii. They went into Mère Perigord's living-room and looked into the bedroom without finding her. When Helen called down into the cellar a quavering voice answered:
"Of course, you goose, and do you go right back to your own cellar or come down here. What do you think we are—fools? Why, one goes to a cellar as naturally as one puts up an umbrella in a rain!"