The soup which had not boiled away was very thick indeed. It turned out to be impossible to drink it, but Priscilla discovered that it could be poured out slowly, like clotted cream, on pieces of bread held ready for it under the rims of the cups. It remained, spreading gradually, on top of the bread long enough to allow a prompt eater to get the whole thing into his mouth without allowing any of the soup to be wasted by dripping on to the ground. The flavour was excellent.
Jimmy returned with the water. Miss Rutherford put the pot on the stove at once. It was better, she said, to boil it without looking at it.
“The directions for use,” said Priscilla, “say that the water should be brought to the boil before the soup is put in. But that, of course, is ridiculous. We’ll put the dry soup in at once and let it simmer. I expect the flavour will come out all right if we leave it till it does boil.”
“In the meanwhile,” said Miss Rutherford, “we’ll attack the Californian peaches.”
They ate them, as they had eaten the others the day before, in their fingers, straight out of the tin with greedy rapture. Five half peaches, nearly all the juice, and a large chunk of bread, were given to Jimmy Kinsella, who carried them off and devoured them in privacy behind his boat.
“Tomorrow,” said Priscilla, “we’ll have another go at the spies. They’re desperately afraid of us. I could see that when they were escaping across Finilaun harbour.”
“By the expression of their faces?” said Miss Rutherford.
“Not exactly. It was more the way they were going on. Sylvia Courtney was once learning off a poem called ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ That was when she was going in for the prize in English literature. She and I sleep in the same room and she used to say a few verses of it every night while we were doing our hairs. I never thought any of it would come in useful to me, but it has; which just shows that one never ought to waste anything. The bit I mean was about a man who walked along a road at night in fear and dread. He used to look round and then turn no more his head, because he knew a frightful fiend did close behind him tread. That’s exactly what those two spies did today when they were sailing across Finilaun; so you see poetry is some use after all. I used to think it wasn’t; but it is. It’s frightfully silly to make up your mind that anything in the world is no use. You never can tell until you’ve tried and that may not be for years.”
“The spies,” said Miss Rutherford, “are, I suppose, encamped somewhere on the far side of Finilaun harbour.”
“On Curraunbeg,” said Priscilla. “I saw the tents.”