Billy was still thinking anathema on the score of kiwis in general and Weifer in particular when he reached the hangar and was confronted with Jennie. His own scout ship was standing just outside the curtains with the blocks at the wheels and the engine idling gently. The crew chief, Hansen, was in the seat, holding back the stick. A little cloud of dust eddied in the mild backwash of the propeller and blew outward across the green expanse of the field. The little ship was straining at her blocks and vibrating just a trifle along her stubby fuselage as a whippet strains at the leash and trembles at the haunches on the scratch line. She was settled back taut against her stocky tail skid, with her landing gear gathered in a crouch beneath her stream-lined belly and her nose lifted eagerly toward a perky white cloud that drifted temptingly across the blue of a tender spring sky. Her four varnished wings—she was a biplane—stretched out, it seemed to Cobb as he came up, in a pathetic gesture of appeal to be off.
Jennie was standing just by the right wing tip, a caressing hand curled lightly about the leading strut. She was drinking in the picture of the eager little craft with a wistful eye. Billy appraised her at a glance, much as he appraised airplanes. And it struck him suddenly that he wanted to know this girl—wanted to know her right away, and intensely. She was small—like a scout ship he thought. And her nose turned up, not arrogantly but eagerly—also like a scout. And she was lithe and taut and alert. A queer comparison flashed through Billy’s mind.
“By golly,” he exclaimed, half aloud, “she’s stream-lined!”
Ordinarily Cobb would have resented the presence of a woman on an airdrome. In the first place he sensed an incongruity between most women and airplanes—a lack of understanding and sympathy. In the second place he was shy and uncomfortable in the presence of women anywhere.
But now without any of his usual gaucherie and diffidence with womankind he went straight to Jennie, slipping off his oil-stained helmet and exposing a shock of crumpled light hair that matched appropriately the viking blue of deep-set steady eyes.
Jennie, watching him advance, saw that he was not tall, but heavy for all that, a solid four-square pattern of a man, thick through and wide across, with stocky legs that had a suspicion of a bow. She guessed that he had ridden horses before airplanes, which was true.
Their meeting was singularly devoid of either form or reticence. They might have been childhood companions. Yet neither had set eyes on the other until that moment.
Jennie was the first to speak, forestalling the casual greeting and introduction that had risen easily to Billy’s lips.
“Is she yours?” asked Jennie, patting the polished wing of the silver scout.
“Mine and the government’s,” grinned Billy. “But she minds me best. Like her, eh?”