His clear, strong voice speaking in laborious public school French gave her a delicious shock of pleasure. He was addressing the stout, bearded Frenchman who, accompanied by the thinner man who had timed Sherbrand by the stop-watch, now walked across the turf to shake the aviator’s hand. As Sherbrand spoke, he drew a white handkerchief from the sleeve of his gabardine and wiped from the corners of his mouth some little blobs of foam, slightly bloodstained. The stout, friendly Frenchman glanced at him, and uttered an exclamation. Sherbrand shook his head in vigorous protest and laughed, repeating his offer to demonstrate again. Upon which the bearded man, who had also a moustache with thick, stiff waxed ends, and wore a large checked-pattern summer suit with a white drill waistcoat, a low collar and a necktie with flowing ends, and was topped with a high-crowned straw hat that suggested Trouville in mid-season, negatived the proposal with a vivacious gesture, pouring forth a stream of words: "_Au contraire, Monsieur, je suis convainçu que vous avez une idée superbe. Nous vous avons observé avec la lunette Zeiss, pendant votre vol, et nous avons constaté le temps très soigneusement: vous avez maintenu le bruit et la stabilité pendant cinq minutes de plus que les vingt-cinq minutes stipulées. Permettez moi comme une simple formalité de voir votre altimètre?_" "By all means!" Sherbrand returned. They went back to the aëroplane together, and Sherbrand reached over and unhooked the altimeter from a board in the pilot’s cockpit, and the bearded man examined it, and then cordially shook hands. "Within two days, at latest. Possibly sooner!" Patrine heard the straw-hatted, bearded gentleman say in English, pronounced with a strong French accent. "Believe me," he added, "I shall represent most strongly the usefulness of your invention to the Chief of the État de l’Aviation. _Au revoir, Monsieur, et encore mes félicitations!_" Then he went away with the small dark man who had used the stop-watch, and who carried the Zeiss binoculars slung in their case. During this business interview Patrine had felt Bawne panting and wriggling close beside her, like an excited, but well-mannered fox-terrier waiting to be whistled for. But Sherbrand, though he glanced at the boy smilingly, had turned aside to engage in conversation with Saxham, and the Chief Scout, whom Sherbrand saluted in orthodox Scout fashion, flushing red under the clear sunburn that darkened his fair skin. "He’s one of Us!" Bawne whispered to Patrine, his own young face alight with pleasure. "He was Scoutmaster of a troop in the North, he told me, and I know he must have been a splendid one. He’s the kind of chap who’d be prepared for anything. Don’t you think he looks like that?"