"Boys don’t squabble like girls—and Wrynche is a frightfully decent fellow. We passed together from Shell into Under Fourth, and we’ve promised always to stand by each other!" "Good egg! And now, how is it you’re here? Has Uncle Owen given in at last about the flying?" "Really and truly! Man alive!"—Bawne’s characteristic expletive—"I’ve been up to-day in the air-’bus and—wasn’t it first-class!" "Honour?" "Honour! Twice round the aërodrome with the Instructor—and presently I’m to have a longer flight with Mr. Sherbrand in his monoplane." "’Mr. Sherbrand’ ..." Patrine repeated rather vaguely. "Sherbrand" had somehow a ring that was familiar. Bawne explained: "He’s a great friend of Father’s. He’s splendid. A regularly topping chap!" "And you’ve actually flown?" "I’ve flewed—and I mean to go on with it." He repeated the assurance more sedately: "It’s the profession I have chosen. They say you’ve got to begin young. And my legs wobbled and the ground rocked a bit when I got down on it. But I wasn’t air-sick at all." "_Air-sick_.... Are people...?" Bawne said from the pedestal of superior knowledge: "Oh, aren’t they just, like anything! The Calais-Dover steamer-crossing’s nothing to it sometimes—the Instructor told me." Patrine laughed. The latest circulating-library novel, _Love in the Clouds_, had omitted to mention this fact. The heroine had donned an aviator’s cap and pneumatic jacket, and "leapt nimbly on board" the aëroplane in half a gale of wind. As the machine dipped and rose gracefully upon the heaving element that cradled it, Enid had experienced merely a delicious exhilaration. Then a crisp moustache had brushed her rosy ear. The voice of Hubert, attuned to deepest melody of passion, had murmured in the shell-like organ of hearing: "Little girl. At last I have you! ... Mine, mine, my bride of the swan-path!—mine for ever and aye!" Bawne continued, innocently discounting further statements on the part of the author of _Love in the Clouds_: "He told me before we went up, you know. Of course, when you’re flying you can’t hear anything but the racket of the propeller. It goes roaring through you till your bones buzz, and the very ends of your teeth hum. So the other man has to yell at you through a trumpet, or write to you on bits of paper, unless he’s switched off the engine for diving, and then you don’t feel like talking—that’s if you’re a beginner, you know.... But man alive! it’s splendid. You must try it, Pat!" She declared, laughingly: "While a single flight costs a brace of my hard-earned guineas, the sport is not for me! Why haven’t I got a pal like your wonderful Mr. Sherbrand? I’m getting envious—you lucky infant, you!" It didn’t hurt to be called an infant by Pat, because she never would have done it in a stranger’s hearing. And it was ripping to have her here, sharing his hour of joy.