It was jolly, he thought, to find a girl who wasn't in the least bored by "Shop." She was a very jolly Little Thing. So sensible. No nonsense about her, thought the boy.
And she, when at last they rose and left the place, threw a last look back at that patch of sky above the hedge, where the black crow had made a dihedral angle, at that brooding elm, at that hay field, golden in the level rays, at that patch of dusty road where the car had pulled up, at that black telegraph-pole where he had hung up his coat. That picture was graven, as by a tool, into the very heart of the girl.
At the end of an expedition that a young woman of more experience and less imagination would have pronounced "tame enough," Gwenna, bright-eyed and rosy from her day in the sunshine, could hardly believe that a whole lifetime had not elapsed since last she'd seen the everyday, the humdrum and incredibly dull Club where she lived.
She burst into her chum's bedroom as Leslie was going to bed.
"Taffy—back at last?" smiled Leslie, between the curtains of black hair on either side of her nightgown. "How's flying?—What?" she exclaimed, "you didn't go up at all? Broke down on the way to Brooklands? I say! How rotten for you, my poor lamb. Had anything to eat?"
"I think so—I mean, rather! He gave me a lovely lunch on the road while we were waiting for the man to mend the car—and then we'd tea at a cottage while he was doing it—and then there wasn't time to do anything but come back to town," explained Gwenna breathlessly, untying her scarf; "and then we'd sort of dinner at the inn before we started back; they brought out a table and things into the garden under the trees."
"What did you have for dinner?"
"I don't know. Oh, there were gooseberries," said Gwenna vaguely, "and a lamp. And the moths all came. Oh, Leslie! It's been so splendid!" She caught her breath. "I mean, it was dreatful about no flying, but——"
"Glad the afternoon wasn't entirely a washout," said Miss Long, in an even voice as she plaited her hair.
"By the way, did the Dampier boy give you back that locket of yours?"