"But your friend Mr. Swayne can't do Futurist paintings," objected the Aeroplane Lady, "at the Front!"
"Well, but that's just what he is doing! He's in France; at Quisait. Painting motor-buses to be used for transport wagons," explained Leslie. "You know the most disguising colour for those things at a distance is said to be not khaki, or feld-grau, or dull green, or any other single colour. You have to have a sort of heather-mixture of all the most brilliant colours that can be got! This simply makes the thing invisible a certain way off. It's the idea of the game-feather tweed on the moors, you know. So Hugo's using his talents by painting emerald-green and magenta and scarlet and black triangles and cubes and splodges all over those big Vanguards——"
"Why, I could do that," murmured the girl who was so busy varnishing the aeroplane wings. "Sure I could."
"Oh, but, Taffy, you haven't been educated up to it," protested Leslie gravely. "You couldn't get it sufficiently dynamic and simultaneous and marinetic!"
A message from the Central Shop to the Aeroplane Lady left the two girls alone presently in the Wing-room. Then Leslie, putting her hand on the rounded arm below the loose sleeve of Gwenna's working-pinafore, said softly and quickly, "Look here, I came down because I had something to tell you, Taffy."
The Welsh girl glanced quickly up into her chum's black eyes.
"Something to tell me?" Gwenna's heart sank.
She didn't want to hear of Leslie having definitely made up her mind at last to marry a—well, a man who was good-natured and well bred and generous enough about wedding-presents, but who confessed himself to be of "no earthly good" when "it came to the real things of life." "Oh, Leslie, is it——"
"It is that you can congratulate me."
"Oh, dear. I was afraid—You mean you are engaged to him, Leslie. To Mr. Swayne."