"Possibly not," said Miss Long, "but there"s no reason why it shouldn"t be made to make a difference to the Dampier boy, is there?"
"What d"you mean, Leslie?" demanded the other girl as they climbed the hill together. For the first time a look of austerity crossed Gwenna"s small face. For the first time it seemed to her that the adored girl-chum was in the wrong. Yes! She had never before been shocked at Leslie, whatever wild thing she said. But now--now she was shocked. She was disappointed in her. She repeated, rebukefully, "What do you mean?"
"What," took up Leslie, defiantly, "do you think I meant?"
"Well--_did_ you mean make--make Mr. Dampier think other people liked me, and that I might like somebody else better than _him_?"
"Something of the sort _had_ crossed the mind of Leslie the Limit."
"Well, then, it isn"t _like_ you----"
"Think not?" There was more than a hint of quarrel in both the girlish voices. Up to now they had never exchanged a word that was not of affection, of comradeship.
Gwenna, flushing deeper, said, "It"s--it"s _horrid_ of you, Leslie."
"Why, pray?"
"Because it would be sort of _deceiving_ Mr. Dampier, for one thing.
It"s a _trick_."
"M"yes!"
"And not a pretty one, either," said little Gwenna, red and angry now.
"It"s--it"s----"
"What?"
"Well, it"s what I should have thought that you yourself, Leslie, would have called "_so obvious_.""
"Exactly," agreed Miss Long, with a flippant little laugh that covered smarting feelings. _Taffy_ had turned against her now! Taffy, who used to think that Leslie could do no wrong! This was what happened when one"s inseparable chum fell in love....
Leslie said impenitently, "I"ve never yet found that "_the obvious thing_" was "_the unsuccessful thing_." Especially when it comes to anything to do with young men. My good child, you and the Dampier boy, you
"_Really const.i.tute a pair, Each being rather like an artless woodland elf._"
I mean, can"t you see that the dear old-fashioned simple remedies and recipes remain the best? For a sore throat, black-currant tea. (Never fails!) For the hair, Maca.s.sar oil. (Unsurpa.s.sed since the Year Eighteen-dot!) For the stimulation of an admirer"s interest, jealousy.
Jealousy and compet.i.tion, Taffy."
"He isn"t an admirer," protested the younger girl, mollified. Then they smiled together. The cloud of the first squabble had pa.s.sed.
Leslie said, "Never mind. If you don"t approve of my specific, don"t think of it again."
CHAPTER XVI
THE AEROPLANE LADY
Curiously enough, Gwenna did think of it again.
On the Sat.u.r.day morning after that walk and talk she took that long dull train-journey. The only bright spot on it was the pa.s.sing of Hendon Flying Ground. Over an hour afterwards she arrived at the little station, set in a sunburnt waste, for the Aircraft Works.
She asked her way of the ticket-collector at the booking-office. But before he could speak, she was answered by some one else, who had come down to the station for a parcel. This was a shortish young man in greasy blue overalls. He had a smiling, friendly, freckled face under a thatch of brilliant red hair; and a voice that seemed oddly out of keeping with his garments. It was an "Oxford" voice.
"The Works? I"m just going on there myself. I"ll come with you and show you, if I may," he said with evident zest.
Gwenna, walking beside him, wished that she had not immediately remembered Leslie"s remarks about young men at aircraft works who might be glad of the arrival of a new pretty face. This young man, piloting her down a straggling village street that seemed neither town nor country, told her at once that he was a pupil at the Works and asked whether she herself were going to help Mrs. Crewe there.
"I don"t know yet," said Gwenna. "I hope so."
"So do I," said the young man gravely, but with a glint of unreserved admiration in the eyes under the red thatch.
Little Gwenna, walking very erect, wished that she were strong and self-reliant enough not to feel cheered by that admiration.
(But she was cheered. No denying that!)
The young man took her down a road flanked on either hand by spa.r.s.e hedges dividing it from that parched and uninteresting plain. The mountain-bred girl found all this flat country incredibly ugly. Only, on her purple Welsh heights and in the green ferny depths threaded by crystal water, nothing ever happened. It was here, in this half-rural desert littered by builders" rubbish and empty cans, that Enterprise was afoot. Strange!
On the right came an opening. She saw a yard with wooden debris and what looked like the wrecks of a couple of motor-cars. Beyond was a cl.u.s.ter of buildings with corrugated iron roofs.
The red-haired pupil mentioned the name of the Aeroplane Lady and said, "I think you"ll find her in the new Wing-room, over here----"
"What a wonderful name for it," thought the little enthusiast, catching her breath, as she was shown through a door. "The Wing-room!"
It was high and clean and s.p.a.cious, with white distempered walls and a floor of wood-dura, firm yet comforting to the feet. The atmosphere of it was, on that July day, somewhat overpowering. Two radiators were working, and the air was heavy with a smell of what seemed like rubber-solution and spirits mixed: this, Gwenna presently found, was the "dope" to varnish the strong linen stretched across the wings of aeroplanes. Two of those great wings were laid out horizontally on trestles to dry. Another of the huge sails with cambered sections was set up on end across a corner; and from behind it there moved, stepping daintily and majestically across the floor, the tawny shape of a Great Dane, who came inquiringly up to the stranger.
Then from behind the screening wing there came a slight, woman"s figure in dark blue. She followed the dog. Little Gwenna Williams, standing timidly in that great room so strange and white, and characteristically scented, found herself face to face with the mistress of the place; the Aeroplane Lady.
Her hair was greying and fluffy as a head of windblown Traveller"s Joy; beneath it her eyes were blue and young and bright and--yes! with a little glad start Gwenna recognised that in these eyes too there was something of that s.p.a.ce-daring gleam of the eyes of Icarus, of her own Flying Man.
"Ah ... I know," said the lady briskly. "You"re the girl Leslie"s sent down to see me."
"Yes," said Gwenna, thinking it nice of her to say "Leslie" and not "Miss Long." She noticed also that the Aeroplane Lady wore at the collar of her shirt a rather wonderful brooch in the shape of the _caducaeus_, the serpent-twisted rod of Mercury. "Oh, I _do_ hope she"ll take me!"
thought the young girl, agitated. "I do want more than anything to come here to work with her. Oh, supposing she thinks I"m too silly and young to be any use--supposing she won"t take me----"
She was tense with nervousness while the Aeroplane Lady, fondling the Great Dane"s tawny ear with a small, capable hand as she spoke, put the girl through a short catechism; asking questions about her age, her people, her previous experience, her salary.... And then she was told that she might come and work on a month"s trial at the Factory, occupying a room in the Aeroplane Lady"s own cottage in the village. The young girl, enraptured, put down her success to the certificates from that Aberystwith school of hers, where she had pa.s.sed "with distinction"
the Senior Cambridge and other examinations. She did not guess that the Aeroplane Lady had taken less than two minutes to make sure that this little Welsh typist-girl carried out what Leslie Long had said of her.
Namely that "she was so desperately keen on anything to do with flying and flyers that she"d scrub the floors of the shops for you if you wished it, besides doing your business letters as carefully as if each one was about some important Diplomatic secret ... try her!"
So on the following Monday Gwenna began her new life.
At first this new work of Gwenna"s consisted very largely of what Leslie had mentioned; the writing-out of business letters at the table set under the window in the small private office adjoining the great Wing-room.