“How do you know? He may be growing some--that spoiled cousin of mine--faster than you are. All war service wings are not of the same feather exactly!”
And now the morning-song of Olive’s laughter held a challenging note of rebuke.
CHAPTER XII
A GOOD LINE
Many a true word is spoken in jest--or figure! All war service wings are not the same.
Atlas was upholding shipping. Atlas was bearing up the country. Atlas was upholding the world and its blue arch of freedom, just as the fabled Atlas of old--stalwart sea-god--was supposed to bear heaven and earth upon his broad shoulders.
That is how the modern Atlas--eighteen-year-old shipyard worker--felt.
It had not been an easy day for Atlas, otherwise, young Atwood Atwell, Olive’s cousin, heir to millions, future prop of a wealthy banking-house, at present steadying--holding up, rather in imagination than reality--a raw and ponderous yellow ship’s rib, and, according to his excited feeling, the whole free world with it.
It had been a harder, and in some ways more stirring, day than if he had been aërially breakfasting on “fish-tails,” supping on cloud-puffs, doing Immelmann turns in the sky, “zooming” upward, or nosing down, to scan the home-shores through powerful binoculars for tell-tale signs of spy-work which might frustrate the labors of Atlas and his fellow-toilers by sooner or later bringing about the sinking of the vessels they built.
Atlas had seen the scouting air-plane pass over the shipyards, five days previous, just before sunset, but he had not paid much attention to it. He was just starting off in his neat little racing-car for a welcome rush back to the open arms of luxury in and about the paternal summer residence at Manchester-by-the-Sea.