For since Gwenna had come back to the Works neither she nor her employer had taken any sort of holiday. That sacred right of the English worker, the "Saturday half-day off," existed no more at those busy Aircraft Works. Just as if it were any ordinary day of the week, the whistle sounded after the midday rest. And just as if it were any other day of the week, Mrs. Crewe's men (all picked workers, of whom not one happened to be a Trades Unionist) stacked up the bicycles on which they'd ridden back from their meal at home in the near-by town, and trooped into the shops. They continued to hurry up with those ships and guns.
Again the whirring and the chinking and the other forge-like noises would fill the place. Again the quick, achieving movements of clever hands, black and soaked in oil, would be carried on, sometimes until, from the training-camps on the surrounding ugly, useful plains, the bugles had sounded "Lights Out." ...
CHAPTER X
LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS"
Now, as it happened, Miss Leslie Long did not choose to wait for her invitation to the Aircraft Works. Unasked and unexpected, she turned up there the very next Saturday afternoon.
She was given a chair in that spacious, white, characteristically-scented room where Mrs. Crewe and Gwenna were again busy with the wings. She was told not to expect either of them to stop work to look at her, but to go on talking and to tell them if there were anything new going on in London.
"Anything? Why, everything's new," Leslie told them gaily.
She wore the mauve linen frock and the shady hat that had been her bridesmaid's attire for Gwenna's wedding. And she was looking well, Gwenna noticed, as she stole a glance at her chum; well, and happier than she had seen Leslie look since the beginning of this eventful summer.