"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines. Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I call it," said the Reverend Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Aviay-shon is—Kite-high lunacy!"
"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the rebuke soberly enough.
"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will not have saved very much."
"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put by, you know——"
"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a special marriage licence?"
"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised that"—("Good old Hugo!" he thought.)—"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service."
"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into act—ual con—tackt with any.)"
"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see. Shan't want any money much, then. So she"—with a little nod towards the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the other red-plush armchair—"she will get that sent home, to her."
"I shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily. It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an expense, a burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure to her lover!
"Oh, a woman ought never, never to feel she has to be kept," thought Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we mind, very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men, and given to us. Let them be kept. And if they don't mind it—well, then it will be a happier world, all round!"