“The French have got a balloon that steers about,” he said. “That’s as near as we are likely to come to flying for a long time yet.”
“This boy said that he meant a real flying machine, not a balloon. It was to be heavier than air. It would fly like a kite or a bird.”
“I doubt if we’ll see that in my lifetime,” said Oswald; “or yours,” blind to the fate that had marked Peter for its own.
“H’m,” said Peter, with a shadow falling upon one of his brightest dreams. (Nobby ought to know these things. His word ought surely to be final. Still, after all, this chap’s father was an engineer.) “I’d love to fly,” said Peter.
§ 10
Something with the decorative effect of a broad processional banner in a very High Church indeed, appeared upon the flagstone path. It was Aunt Phœbe.
She had come out into the garden half an hour before her usual time. But indeed from the moment when she had heard Oswald and Peter talking in the garden below she had been unable to write more. After some futile attempts to pick up the lost thread of her discourse, she had gone to her bedroom and revised her toilet, which was often careless in the morning, so as to be more expressive of her personality. She was wearing a long djibbah-like garment with a richly embroidered yoke, she had sandals over her brown stockings, and rather by way of symbol of authorship than for any immediate use she bore a big leather portfolio. There was moreover now a gold-mounted fountain pen amidst the other ingredients of the cheerful chatelaine that had once delighted Peter’s babyhood.
She seemed a fuller, more confident person than Oswald remembered. She came eloquent with apologies. “I have to make an inexorable rule,” she said, “against disturbances. As if I were a man writer instead of a mere woman. Between nine and one I am a woman enclosed—cloistered—refused. Sacred hours of self-completeness. Unspeakably precious to me. Visitors are not even announced. It is a law—inflexible.”
“We must all respect our work,” said Oswald.
“It’s over now,” said Aunt Phœbe, smiling like the sun after clouds. “It’s over now for the day. I am just human—until tomorrow again.”