CHAPTER IX
THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT"
The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of the khaki-clad sentry at the entrance.
He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road outside the shops; and he stopped Gwenna peremptorily, not knowing that she was one of the staff.
She told him, and went on. She found the big central shop in a ferment of activity. Mr. Ryan, striding out on some hurried errand, nearly knocked her over. He called an "Awfully sorry, Miss Gwenna—Mrs. Dampier, I mean," over his shoulder. She saw that his day of dalliance was past, even had she been still "Miss Gwenna." He had less time for Girl, nowadays. The frames of no fewer than four aeroplanes were set up on the stocks; and out of the body of the most nearly completed one there climbed the slight figure of the Aeroplane Lady. Her blue and youthful eyes lighted up at the sight of the girl standing in the clear, diffused light of the many windows and backed by the spinning shafting.
"Ah! You've arrived, Mrs. Dampier," she said briskly, using the new name without a pause or a smile, for which Gwenna blessed her. "Thank Heaven I shall have a reliable clerk again.... No end of correspondence now, my dear. A sheaf of it waiting in the office. Come on and see to it now, will you? And for goodness' sake remind me that I am 'theirs obediently,' instead of merely 'truly,' to the Admiralty. I always forget. If I were left to myself my letters would sound just like the aviator's who wrote to the POWERS-THAT-BE: 'Commander So-and-So presents his compliments and begs respectfully to submit that don't you think it would be a jolly good thing if we started a repairing shop?'—somewhere or other. Well! Here we are, you see. Stacks of it!" she went on as they reached that office where an airman's sweetheart had first realised the idea that an aeroplane might mean a ship of war—war in the clouds.
"We shall have as much work as we can get through now," said the Aeroplane Lady. "Look at this order from the War Office. And this—and this!"
For to all intents and purposes the War Office and the Admiralty had "taken over" Mrs. Crewe's Aircraft Factory.