The Red Signal: A Farewell to Apron-Hats
Right. When we left Hilda, she had pushed furniture around an attic room and then set it very thoroughly on fire before realizing she was trapped in a burning attic. Moreover, her soldier had just saved her off a ladder, because this girl has some sort of allergic fainting reaction to ladders.
However, we've reached the pitch of what Grace wants to do with a fire launched in an attic, because:
When she awoke she was in her own lovely blue and white room, with a wonderful smell of roses everywhere,
The whole mess, lonely street, potentially abandoned post-box, worn-down neighborhood, spies, and all has been tidied away in a nice scene change.
Hadn't she been through that awful experience at all? Had she only dreamed it after a wakeful night of fretting over that strange girl who seemed so intimate with the Stevenses?
Oh, lord. We just had our second bout with the SPIES who ran amok the first half of the book. We have no time for "was it all a dream" nonsense. If you're concerned about that girl and why you don't remember her, I didn't either until I remembered her as the one who doubtless couldn't make a hat out of a simpler hat. Yeah. That one. We will dismiss her from our minds again with an audience-ly "hmph!"
So there is more. What touching scene exactly I will draw a veil over, in case you should ever want to purchase this novel and discover its glories for yourself. Suffice to say that Hilda barely remembers anything from her adventure into pyromania, but since nobody seems to be pressing charges, either the houses to either side were saved from the blaze or the whole thing was blamed on the foul cigar-butt of an ARSONIST SPY.
There is deep romance.
"You are wounded! Your hand is all bandaged!"
"Not wounded. Only a trifle scorched. You gave me a pretty warm welcome, you know."
How right. It would have been sad if he'd gotten back from France after a narrow brush with death only to be finished off by Hilda and her match-book. However, we're busy wrapping ends up. Overcome with the prospect of taking this girl home so she can burn down any unwanted properties, he proposes very romantically. The Schwarzes and the airman were all caught together, soon to "go into seclusion out at some fort or other in the west, where they will be forcibly prevented from doing any more harm this session." In another war they'd be across the way from an internment camp for Japanese-Americans who had been minding their own business.
There is more romantic stuff. Grace seems to have my problem with endings, which is that having had a wonderful romp of spies and hats and trains and fires, she sort of sputters out. We are sputtering. It is sad. Hilda flings her bandaged hands around his neck, which sounds like we're going to close on his demise after all, and whispers something to him. THE END. No, it is THE END in big block letters.
To this day the Secret Service burns lesser aprons in propitiation to the sacred Apron Hat, which gathers all wisdom and initiative under its denim corners.
Fear not. Grace was a prolific writer, and there is ever so much more to explore.