Norma and Patsy were away.
“It’s an awful little island,” Patsy said as they marched along. “I can walk clear to the end of it in ten minutes.”
“Then it won’t take us long,” Norma said. “But don’t you get lonesome here?” she asked.
“Oh, no! There are three fishermen and two Miss Morrisons without any husbands, and Grandfather, and all the good Gremlins. Oh! there are a lot of us—
“Besides,” she added a moment later, “I’d have to stay here anyway. Daddy’s an officer in the Navy. And Momsie’s helping make machine guns in a big factory. She makes good machine guns, good, good ones. No bad Gremlin can keep the bullets from coming out of her machine guns.”
“I’ll bet they can’t,” Norma said seriously.
“Grandfather says we couldn’t beat our enemies at all if it wasn’t for the women of America.”
“I’m sure of that,” Norma agreed again.
They were passing through a grove of pines that whispered over their heads.
“That’s the bad Gremlins whispering.” A note of mystery crept into Patsy’s voice. “They’re fixing up a storm, a really bad storm. They always whisper like that before a storm.”