We got to the airport with fifteen minutes to spare. We sat around and waited for the plane. After a while it came skimming in from the east, taxied across the field, and was serviced.
A loudspeaker blared out that passengers for the west would be taken aboard the plane. A gate slid open.
The men who had been filling the plane with gasoline and giving it a routine check-up got back out of the way. The stewardess opened the plane door, and a uniformed attendant pulled away a barrier. Bertha and I got aboard. There were already half a dozen through passengers on the plane. Bertha settled herself, heaved a deep sigh, and said, “I’m starved. Donald, run back and get me a chocolate bar.”
“No. There isn’t time.”
“Don’t be a sap. There’s two minutes yet.”
“I think your watch is slow.”
She settled back against the cushions with a sigh. The man who was seated by the window turned to give her a surreptitious glance.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“All right, except my knees are wobbly. There isn’t any food in me. I’m a dishrag. Those doctors drained me dry.”
The man next to me held out a watch and tapped the dial. It was still three and a half minutes of time for departure. “I happen to know,” he said, “that this is right — to the second.”