The Zeppelin's PassengerOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Zeppelin's Passenger
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Historical fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
The door of the comfortable library in which they were seated was
suddenly thrown open. An exceedingly alert-looking young lady, very
much befreckled, and as yet unemancipated from the long plaits of the
schoolroom, came in like a whirlwind. In her hand she carried a man's
Homburg hat, which she waved aloft in triumph.
“Come in, Arthur,” she shouted to a young subaltern who was hovering
in the background. “Look what I've got, Helen! A trophy! Just look, Mr.
Harrison and Captain Griffiths! I found it in a bush, not twenty yards
from where the observation car came down.”
Helen turned the hat around in amused bewilderment.
“But, my dear child,” she exclaimed, “this is nothing but an ordinary
hat! People who travel in Zeppelins don't wear things like that. How
do you do, Mr. Somerfield?” she added, smiling at the young man who had
followed Nora into the room.
“Don't they!” the latter retorted, with an air of superior knowledge.
“Just look here!”
She turned down the lining and showed it to them. “What do you make of
that?” she asked triumphantly.
Helen gazed at the gold-printed letters a little incredulously.
“Read it out,” Nora insisted.
Helen obeyed:
“Schmidt,
Berlin,
Unter den Linden, 127.”
“That sounds German,” she admitted.
“It's a trophy, all right,” Nora declared. “One of the crew--probably
the Commander--must have come on board in a hurry and changed into
uniform after they had started.”
“It is my painful duty, Miss Nora,” Harrison announced solemnly,
“to inform you, on behalf of Captain Griffiths, that all articles of
whatsoever description, found in the vicinity of Dutchman's Common,
which might possibly have belonged to any one in the Zeppelin, must be
sent at once to the War Office.”
“Rubbish!” Nora scoffed. “The War Office aren't going to have my hat.”
“Duty,” the young man began--
“You can go back to the Depot and do your duty, then, Mr. Harrison,”
Nora interrupted, “but you're not going to have my hat. I'd throw it
into the fire sooner than give it up.”
“Military regulations must be obeyed, Miss Nora,” Captain Griffiths
ventured thoughtfully.
“Nothing so important as hats,” Harrison put in. “You see they
fit--somebody.”
The girl's gesture was irreverent but convincing. “I'd listen to
anything Captain Griffiths had to say,” she declared, “but you boys who
are learning to be soldiers are simply eaten up with conceit. There's
nothing in your textbook about hats. If you're going to make yourselves
disagreeable about this, I shall simply ignore the regiment.”
The two young men fell into attitudes of mock dismay. Nora took a
chocolate from a box.
“Be merciful, Miss Nora!” Harrison pleaded tearfully.
“Don't break the regiment up altogether,” Somerfield begged, with a
little catch in his voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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