Air pilots -- Fiction; Alcohol trafficking -- Fiction; Kentucky -- Fiction; Love stories; Teachers -- Fiction
MOONLIGHT AND MOONSHINE
by Thomson Burtis
Author of “Texas Steerers,” “Release,” etc.
GEORGE ARLINGTON HEMINGWOOD, OF THE AIR SERVICE, DIDN’T CARE
WHAT THOSE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINEERS DID SO LONG AS THEY DIDN’T
DO IT TO HIM. BUT WHEN A BULLET IN THE ENGINE OF HIS SOARING
PLANE MADE HIM TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO LAND ON TREE-TOPS
AND LIVE, HE CONCLUDED THAT IT WAS TIME TO START SOMETHING
Lieutenant George Arlington Hemingwood, of the Hemingwoods of Boston,
was wrestling with a problem. Having applied soothing lotions to his
freshly shaved and smarting face, and put the last touches to the part
in his black hair, he continued to stare into the small mirror and
wonder whether he ought to do it or not.
He leaned over until his deeply tanned face was within an inch of the
glass and inspected in detail the small, close-cropped black mustache
which adorned his upper lip. It was a fairly luxuriant mustache, as
those hirsute adornments go, but it did not quite satisfy his critical
eye. Was it worthwhile to shave it off in the hope that two hairs would
sprout where but one had grown before?
Let it go as it was, he decided.
Having decided this burning question, Hemingwood proceeded leisurely to
don his tan serge shirt. He had no further interest in his face,
although that, like its principal ornament, was a good enough specimen
of its kind. A bit round, perhaps, and certainly very brown, but lighted
amazingly by a pair of sparkling brown eyes and a wide, good-humored
mouth which was usually curved in either a smile or a grin. If not, it
conveyed the impression that it would stretch into one or the other at
the slightest provocation.
It was the face of a contented and cheery person, both of which George
Arlington Hemingwood was. Being a first lieutenant in the Air Service
satisfied him completely and he had little more to ask from fate. The
future was pleasant to his mind’s eye. He wasted no thought whatever on
his prospects. He could not have told you where he stood on the
promotion list, because he did not care particularly whether he ever
became a captain or not.
Life, as it was and as he lived it, was a good invention of the Lord’s
to his mind. The two rooms he occupied, with walls of beaverboard and a
leak in the ceiling, were comfortable enough to live in and far more
appealing than the shadowed confines of the Hemingwood residence on
Beacon Hill, and, although his father’s bank was a fine big bank and his
father’s son could lead an enviable commercial existence therein, the
cockpit of a De Haviland airplane was infinitely more desirable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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