Jake did not answer.
Two days later Davidge was so proud that he came out into the main office and told all the clerks of the new distinction.
“They loaded the Clara in record time with wheat for England. She sails to-day.”
At his first chance to speak to Marie Louise he said:
“You compared her to Little Red Riding Hood––remember? Well, she’s starting out through the big woods with a lot of victuals for old Granny England. If only the wolves don’t get her!”
He felt, and Mamise felt, as lonely and as anxious for her as if she were indeed a little red-bonneted forest-farer on an errand of mercy.
Ships have always been dear to humankind because of the dangers they run and because of the pluck they show in storms and fires, and the unending fights they make against wind and wave. But of late they had had unheard-of enemies to meet, the submarine and the infernal machine placed inside the cargo.
Marie Louise spoke of this at the supper-table that night:
“To think, with so little food in the world and so many starving to death, people could sink ships full of wheat!”