Wynn was grateful, and came over, in his tight-buttoned uniform, to say
so. His training centre was not thirty miles away, and his talk was so
technical that it had to be explained by charts of the various types of
machines. He gave Mary such a chart.
'And you'd better study it, Postey,' he said. 'You'll be seeing a lot of
'em soon.' So Mary studied the chart, but when Wynn next arrived to
swell and exalt himself before his womenfolk, she failed badly in
cross-examination, and he rated her as in the old days.
'You _look_ more or less like a human being,' he said in his new Service
voice. 'You _must_ have had a brain at some time in your past. What have
you done with it? Where d'you keep it? A sheep would know more than you
do, Postey. You're lamentable. You are less use than an empty tin can,
you dowey old cassowary.'
'I suppose that's how your superior officer talks to _you_?' said Miss
Fowler from her chair.
'But Postey doesn't mind,' Wynn replied. 'Do you, Packthread?'
'Why? Was Wynn saying anything? I shall get this right next time you
come,' she muttered, and knitted her pale brows again over the diagrams
of Taubes, Farmans, and Zeppelins.
In a few weeks the mere land and sea battles which she read to Miss
Fowler after breakfast passed her like idle breath. Her heart and her
interest were high in the air with Wynn, who had finished 'rolling'
(whatever that might be) and had gone on from a 'taxi' to a machine more
or less his own. One morning it circled over their very chimneys,
alighted on Vegg's Heath, almost outside the garden gate, and Wynn came
in, blue with cold, shouting for food. He and she drew Miss Fowler's
bath-chair, as they had often done, along the Heath foot-path to look at
the bi-plane. Mary observed that 'it smelt very badly.'
'Postey, I believe you think with your nose,' said Wynn. 'I know you
don't with your mind. Now, what type's that?'
'I'll go and get the chart,' said Mary.
'You're hopeless! You haven't the mental capacity of a white mouse,' he
cried, and explained the dials and the sockets for bomb-dropping till it
was time to mount and ride the wet clouds once more.
'Ah!' said Mary, as the stinking thing flared upward. 'Wait till our
Flying Corps gets to work! Wynn says it's much safer than in the
trenches.'
'I wonder,' said Miss Fowler. 'Tell Cheape to come and tow me home
again.'
'It's all downhill. I can do it,' said Mary, 'if you put the brake on.'
She laid her lean self against the pushing-bar and home they trundled.
'Now, be careful you aren't heated and catch a chill,' said overdressed
Miss Fowler.
'Nothing makes me perspire,' said Mary. As she bumped the chair under
the porch she straightened her long back. The exertion had given her a
colour, and the wind had loosened a wisp of hair across her forehead.
Miss Fowler glanced at her.
'What do you ever think of, Mary?' she demanded suddenly.
'Oh, Wynn says he wants another three pairs of stockings--as thick as we
can make them.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account