"Men always pretend afterwards that they've never said anything. Cuckoo told me that when these people 'mean business' they can fly millions of times higher and faster than we ever see them here. He said there wasn't the slightest reason why Muriel shouldn't——"
Here the sound, hard and clear as an icicle, of a very young girl's voice, ringing out:
"And anyhow, mother, I'm going to!"
Glancing round, Gwenna saw a lanky girl younger than herself spring down from the big, dove-grey car, and stride, followed by a tall man wearing a top-hat, to the booking-office below the stand. This girl wore a long brown oilskin coat over her white sweater and her short, admirably-cut skirt; a brown chiffon veil tied over her head showed the shape and the auburn gleam of it without giving a hair to the breeze.
"Lovely to be those sort of people," sighed the enviously watching Gwenna, as other girls from the cars strolled into the enclosure with the notice "COMMITTEE ONLY," and seemed to be discussing, laying bets, perhaps, about the impending race for machines carrying a lady-passenger. "Fancy, whenever any of them want to do or to see or even to be anything, they've only got to say, 'Anyhow, I'm going to!' and there they are! That's the way to live!"
Presently the three London typists were sitting at a table under the green awning and the hanging flower-baskets; one of a score of tables where folk sat and chattered and turned their eyes ceaselessly upwards to the blue sky, pointed at by those giant pylon-fingers, invaded by those soaring, whirring, insolent, space daring creatures of man.
The first biplane had been preparing for the Ladies' Race. Now came the start; with the dropped white flag the announcement from that dominating magnified voice:
"Mis ter Damp ier on a Maurice Far man bi plane ac companied by Miss Mu riel Con yers——"
The German girl put in, "Your man again, Gwenna!"
"My man indeed. And I haven't seen him, even yet," complained the Welsh girl again, laughing over her cup of cooling tea, "only in the photograph! Don't suppose I ever shall, either. It's my fate, girls. Nothing really exciting ever happens to me!" She sighed, then brightened again as she remembered something. "I must be off now.... I've got to go out this evening."