“Not a bit, Linda. I want you to have a good time.”
So Linda returned to the telephone and promised to be ready at half-past eleven.
She would not admit to herself how thrilled she was, but she selected her prettiest dress, and was ready for Lord Dudley some minutes before his taxi arrived. She ran out on the porch to meet him.
“We must keep the cab,” she said, as she shook hands with him, and noticed that he was even better looking than she had thought, “in order to get to the airport.”
“Right,” he agreed, giving the necessary directions to the driver.
“Now you must tell me all about yourself, Miss Carlton,” he said, as he seated himself beside her in the cab. “I mean the things that haven’t been in the papers.”
“There really isn’t anything to tell,” replied Linda, modestly. “I’m just an ordinary girl, with a high-school education and a year at a ground school, where I earned my transport pilot’s license. The only thrilling thing about me is my ‘Ladybug’—that’s the name of my autogiro.”
“I know something more thrilling than any of those things,” he said, with his engaging smile. “Something the newspapers have never been able to describe— Your flawless beauty!”
Linda flushed to the lobes of her ears at the compliment; it didn’t seem possible that a young man like this, who had been everywhere and met thousands of beautiful girls, could find her so attractive. Yet there was a note of sincerity in his low, deep voice that prevented any doubt.
“I wish you would tell me about yourself, instead,” she urged, anxious to change the subject. “About your family in England, and how you happened to come to America.”