“He was--alone--when he passed us on the beach, while I was painting the dory.... Ugh! I’m cold; d’you know it?” shivered Sara, her flame dying down, like an early morning fire lit too soon, before there is fuel to feed it, refusing even to kindle the spark of memory which she craved, for her comfort.
“Well, if there was a busy spy up in the neighborhood of those shipyards, he might--think of it!--might manage to give out information about the launching of some of the medium-sized vessels which the men are building just’s fast as ever they can, working overtime at it--I wonder if my cousin who leads the blind horse gets as far as that?--to fill the gaps made by horrid submarines in the spunky Gloucester fishing-fleet.”
Sybil’s eyes of monkey-flower blue were now throwing aërial forget-me-nots--pensive glances--after the vanishing cavalry of the air, even as she thus spoke, with one-half of her thoughts on those less spectacular heroes of the deep, the toiling fishermen, whose schooners and savings were being, daily, sunk before their eyes.
“Humph! Captain Andy says he wonders why the subs have not ventured in near shore already, and made an attempt to sink some of those vessels just after they were launched--when they first smelled water, meaning when they were being towed round to the seaport--Gloucester--to have their masts and rigging set up.... O dear! may it not be long before he takes us up the river to see a launching, and visit my Cousin Atwood at his work. I just want to see for myself what sort of a bold front that boy is putting up now!”
Olive, laughing and yearning together, waved a farewell to the aëroplane, now a vanishing speck.
“‘Oh, Major! Oh, Major! Oh, Major!’ he said ...”
Sara’s shoulders were comically shrugged.
“His ambitions are many,
His achievements are small,
He came through the Game with no wings at all!”