Forth he leaped, and pushed his goggles back--then stood for a moment, a-blink, a knight of the skies, fresh from his parade ground, the clouds, landing among fairy princesses, filleted and headed, upon a fairy shore, with a rainbowed Council Fire in the background and three tall candles, of the charmed colors which ringed his wings--one still alight, flickering a welcome--in their antique silver candlesticks of sand!
Could romance go further? The Guardian Fairy felt that it could not. She stepped forward and held out her hand.
“It was a very pretty landing, indeed,” she said.
The knight unbuttoned his leather helmet and pulled it off; his long back gauntlet, reaching to the elbow, too!
“Well! she did drag her tail a little,” he answered, glancing deprecatingly at his “ship” with its red, white, and blue rudder; the great crimson fish--fabled fish--with wings in its head and a propeller in its gaping mouth, which the high tide seemed to have thrown up upon the sands.
“My name is Fenn,” he volunteered, bowing over the Guardian’s hand.
“Lieutenant Fenn, I suppose?”
The aëronaut bowed again, unbuttoning his leather coat, so that there was a gleam of silver bars--those army bars which Iver wore, thought Sara quickly--upon the broad shoulders beneath; of silver wings, too, wrought on black velvet upon the tired breast, heaving boyishly.
“And--and this is my observer, Lieutenant Hayward,” he introduced further, turning to the second air-man, who, also, had vacated the airy nest of his little cock-pit and stood upon the darkening tide-shore.
“Well! Mother Earth is always ready to welcome aviators--or her children are!” The Guardian shook hands with both.