“And what would the air-scouts choose to drink?”
“Oh-h, I know!” flashed forth Sybil. “They’re just crazy about milk--mild milk. Don’t they--don’t they always drop down on a farmer if they get a chance? My cousin, Atwood, who’s working in the shipbuilding yards, not a dozen miles from here--leading a blind horse hitched to a great yellow ship’s timber and not enjoying it--he told me that when he visited a friend in training at the flying-fields, the chum said that after a long fly he was just like a baby, crying for milk.”
“Zooms! We’ve got gallons of that--nearly one gallon, anyway. We brought it home from the nearest farmhouse this evening--a mile away, across the dunes.”
Sara, much concerned over this novel entertainment of angels--winged beings--unprepared, swung round on her moccasined sole for an inspired rush back to camp.
“Hurrah for the home fires!” The aviator gleefully shrugged his shoulders. “Oh! I felt it in my bones, all afternoon, that before night we’d land--somewhere--in clover:
“‘Oh, a wonderful thing is a flying cadet,
He lives on a promise--and--hope!’”
he chanted boyishly.
Then, from the darkling tide’s edge, his “zooming” glance soared upward to his parade-ground, the night sky; to Atawessu, the evening star, the Creature Far Above, as softly--half-wistfully--he finished the quotation, reminiscent of his training days above the flying-fields:
“But--but the twinkling stars are as far as his bars,