"She's going down to Norfolk to take on a cargo of food for England--wheat for the Allies. I'm glad she's going to take breadstuffs to people. My mother used to be always going about to hungry folks with a basket of food on her arm." Mamise had Jake and Abbie in to dinner that night. She was all agog about the success of _Clara_, and hoped that _Mamise_ would one day do as well. Jake took a sudden interest in the matter. "Did the boss tell you where the _Clara_ was goin' to?" "Yes--Norfolk." Jake considered his unmentionable cigar a few minutes, then rose and mumbled: "Goin' out to get some more cigars." Abbie called after him, "Hay, you got a whole half-box left." But Jake did not seem to hear the recall. He came back later cigarless and asked for the box. "I thought you went out to git some," said Abbie, who felt it necessary to let no occasion slip for reminding him of some blunder he had made. Jake laughed very amiably. "Well, so I did, and I went into a cigar-store, at that. But I hadda telephone a certain party, long-distance--and I forgot." Abbie broke in, "Who you got to long-distance to?" 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!" On the second day after the _Clara_ set forth on the ocean Marie Louise took dictation for an hour and wrote out her letters as fast as she could. In the afternoon she took the typewritten transcripts into Davidge's office to drop them into his "in" basket. The telephone rang. His hand went out to it, and she heard him say: "Mr. Davidge speaking.... Hello, Ed.... What? You're too close to the 'phone.... That's better.... You're too far away--start all over.... I don't get that.... Yes--a life-boat picked up with what--oh, six survivors. Yes--from what ship? I say, six survivors from what ship?... The _Clara_? She's gone? _Clara_?"