“No impertinence about it at all. I had a good job, and maybe I shall have the luck to get it back again after the war is over. I was a floor-walker in a Newark, New Jersey, department store. I’ve been up in the world since then. Had my ups and downs as it were.”
Grace laughed. War played strange freaks with human beings. The officer’s confession, instead of decreasing her admiration of him, increased it. A man who could step from department store life into the perilous life of a wartime balloonist was a man! That was the way with her wonderful Americans. But to have to return to the chattering crowds of shoppers, directing this one to the ribbon counter, that one to the galvanized cooking utensil sale in the basement—the thought was too much for Grace Harlowe. She could not reconcile herself to it nor adjust herself to seeing this hardy pirate acting in any such rôle in the future.
“You do not think so, eh?” he demanded shrewdly. “Watch me. One day you will step up to me, without recognizing me, and say, ‘Floor-walker, will you please direct me to the cosmetics?’”
“I will not,” declared Grace Harlowe. “I never use them.”
Both laughed heartily.
“You may be right—I may be right, who knows?” he muttered. “I shall miss this wonderful life, of course, and it will be difficult to settle down and have to look up again rather than down on a world of pigmies. Had I to do it over again I should go into aviation. Those fellows are free as the birds of the air, while I am anchored to a tree or truck. I prefer to be free, to soar the heavens without having a string attached—What!”
The major sprang up, scattering the remainder of their tiffin on the floor of the basket. The basket had given a terrific lurch and, glancing up with a frightened expression on her face, Grace saw the huge bag heaving, swelling and plunging, the basket twisting, lurching and jolting under her.
The girl staggered to her feet and grasped the side of the basket. Her head was spinning and her diaphragm seemed to be seeking to emulate the erratic movements of the ship.
“Wind-storm!” shouted Major Colt. “Going to have some real sport.”
Grace did not know what his idea of sport was, but she was quite positive that if this were sport she was not a sportsman.