She made a little gesture, palms up, as though she gathered something from the air.
"News? The old wire has been pouring it at me all morning. Henry Levateur went up thirty-two thousand feet yesterday and the Admiral Barr was launched."
Connor kept fairly abreast of the times, but now he was at sea.
"That's the new liner, isn't it?"
"Thirty thousand tons of liner at that. She took the water like a duck. Well, that's the stuff for Uncle Sam to give them; a few more like the Admiral Barr and we'll have the old colors in every port that calls itself a town. Europe will have to wake up."
She counted the telegram with a sweep of her pencil and flipped the change to Connor out of the coin-box. The rattle of the sounder meant new things to Connor; the edges of the world crowded close, for when the noise stopped, in the thick silence he watched her features relax and the light go out of her eyes. It enabled him to glance into her life in Lukin, with only the chattering wire for a companion. A moment before she had been radiant—now she was a tired girl with purple shadows beneath her eyes making them look ghostly large.
"Oh, Bobby," she called. A tall youth came out of an inner room. "Take the key, please; I'm going out for lunch."
"Come to the hotel with me," suggested Connor.
"Lunch at Townsend's?" She laughed with a touch of excitement. "That's a treat."
Already she gained color and her eyes brightened. She was like a motor, Connor decided, nothing in itself, but responding to every electric current.