Wings over England
talked-of girl in England!” Dave was bursting with his new idea. “Just go up to London with me tomorrow. My uncle has a trans-Atlantic news broadcast. He’ll arrange it all. Wi—will you go?”

“Sure! Shake on it.” The girl put out a slim hand.

“It’s just as I thought,” declared the Little Lord, as the men came stomping back into the room a moment later. “Those bombs were rather small. A Messerschmitt can’t carry a heavy load. But they can keep all of England on edge with their nuisance flight.”

“Cheerio!” Cherry sprang to her feet. “At least one Messerschmitt has ceased to be a nuisance, and that, I’m told, is because a certain Young Lord learned how to fly long ago.”

“All part of a day’s work,” the Young Lord grinned. “I’d like just such a scrap every morning before breakfast.”

At that the cook brought in cakes and steaming coffee and they all took seats by the great broad three-inch thick table that had served the Ramsey family for more than a hundred years.

In the meantime Alice was telling her young refugees the promised spy story.

“Once,” she began, “in that other terrible war, the one in which my father and your grandfather fought, there were two spies named Louise and Charlotte.”

“Oh!” Tillie exclaimed with a sudden start. “Are there really lady spies?”

“To be sure,” was the quiet reply.

“Goody!” Tillie clapped her hands. “I’m going to be a lady spy!”

“Yes sir!” Peggy broke in with her high, piping voice. “We’ll both be spies. You be Louise, and I’ll be Charlotte!”

“Wait and see!” the story teller warned. “Let me tell you the story. Then you may not want to be a spy at all!”

“Oh, yes we will!” Tillie insisted. “Aunt Alice (they called her aunt) do we have a spy right here on our farm?” The child’s voice was low, mysterious.

“Hush!” Alice warned. “Don’t dare to breathe a word about that.”

“Tillie!” The younger child’s voice rose sharply, “Let her tell the story!”

And so, while the children lay back among the cushions, Alice told the story of Louise and Charlotte.


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