This was but a fleeting fancy. A turn in the road shut the place from her view. She heard the young Lord saying:
“I’ve fixed up an air raid shelter in the dungeon of the castle. It’s thirty steps down, walled over with massive rocks. Even had an oil heater installed. We’ll be safe and comfortable there.”
“Safe and comfortable,” Alice thought angrily. “In an insane, upside down world such as this, who wanted to be comfortable and safe?”
This too she realized was a wrong slant on life. “Comfort and safety,” she assured herself, “are two of the great necessities of life. For, on the morrow, there is work to be done.” At that she did not know the half of it.
Warmington Castle, a great, square mass of masonry, looming a hundred feet above the meadows, greeted them as they took one more curve in the road. A minute more and there they were.
With the droning of heavy motors still in their ears, they hurried down one narrow stairs, then another, to find themselves in a rather large windowless room where candles blinked at them from every corner and an oil stove glowed warmly up at them.
Lady Applegate, a frail, nervous little lady, greeted them with jittery handshakes and an uncertain smile. Her husband had died from wounds received in that other war. And now this! “Poor soul,” thought Alice.
As if to guard her from bombs, the Lady’s servants, butler, cook, and two maids, sat clustered about her.
Dave was not long in the dungeon. Having wished to witness an air-raid he took the thing by the bit and hurried back up the stairs. Flash, the collie, it would seem, was of the same mind. He followed him out.
As if in search of fresh targets, just any roof gleaming up from the moonlit night, giant planes were still circling. Dave strained his eyes for a glimpse of them.