Lettice gazed at him, slowly and thoughtfully rubbing her nose.
"I got the wire just as I was startin' for the river. No, he's not bad, only a broken arm. But the nuisance of it is that he's entered for a race on Friday week, and he wants me to take it on instead. I hate racing on a Friday—I hate racing at all, for that matter, mixin' oneself up with newspaper men and that sort of raffle; but I'll have to do it."
"A race? What fun! What for?" asked Dorothea, coming up in time to hear the last words. She dropped down on a bundle of faggots, and extended under Lettice's nose a brown and purple palm full of blackberries. Lettice shook her head, slowly, twice. Dorothea, with a glint of fun, reached out to offer them to Denis. He screwed his eyeglass into place, gazed at them absently, and said: "No, thank you." Dorothea continued to wave them under his nose, in the manner of the importunate sidesman offering the plate to the stingy parishioner. Denis, yielding, still absently, chose a berry and swallowed it whole like a pill. Dorothea with a broad smile emptied the rest of her handful into her mouth, and hugged her knees again with her crimson hands. The whole had taken but a moment. "I didn't know you went in for racing. What did you say it was for?" she repeated.
"Silver trophy offered by the Birmingham Courier. Cross-country, with compulsory halts at Redditch, Coventry, Polesworth, and Walsall. He'd scratch, if it weren't that we're both rather keen on testin' our new little bus. She's done one hundred and twenty and over on her trial flights—"
"Flights? It's an aeroplane race? You fly? You told me he was an engineer!" cried Dorothea, rounding on Lettice in hot reproach. "Why, I've been longing to meet a flying man for years! Go on, go on, tell me all about it. Do you fly much? How idiotic of me not to recognize your name!"
Here was the enthusiastic young lady, Denis's pet aversion; but, strange to say, he did not seem to mind her.
"Well, I build aeroplanes," he said, smiling. "It's my partner does the ornamental work. You may know his name—Wandesforde."
"Wandesforde? Sydney Wandesforde? Why, I should just think I do! He was the man who came in first in the London-Berlin race, and was disqualified for passing inside one of the controls in a fog. And then he had that marvelous escape, when his machine turned over in the air, and spilt him in a heap on the top plane, and he managed to regain control, and brought her down safely after all! Why, he's magnificent! I'd give—I'd give a thousand pounds to go up with him!"
"You can do it for less than that," said Denis, amused.