Читать книгу The Oaken Heart онлайн

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One evening we in Auburn got our first definite hint. Mr. Moore came up from the schoolhouse, where his wife is Headmistress, to ask P.Y.C. to take the chair at an Air Raid Precautions meeting on the following Tuesday. It was important, he said, and they were speeding it up all over the district.

Air Raid Precautions. This was more like it. This sounded more like business. We had had air raids before. A Zeppelin had come down in a village not far away in the last war, and there was a great chunk of it in the garage still. Also we had heard about Spain and had seen horrifying newsreels from China, and we had no illusions whatever about the value of the aeroplane as an offensive weapon.

Yet at that moment the wireless was giving us to understand that the crisis was upon us. Events were obviously moving fast. If one could believe one's ears and use one's head, air raids might begin that night. What in the name of sanity was this tale of a meeting next Tuesday?

"It won't come to nothin'." "There's something behind it." "He's a-playing for something." "He's frightening on 'em."