Dorothea came back at last unexpectedly. After leaving his lunch to get cold, and then bolting it in five minutes, Denis had rushed back to his desk to finish a calculation. He was writing the last figures when a car turned in at the gates, and he lifted his head with a frown, which changed suddenly into a smile of pleasure. Well he knew that gay little tune on the horn, the sound of that fresh young voice in the porch! Down went his pen, and out he hurried to greet her, with an eagerness which surprised himself.
"Here's your bad penny again, you see!" she cried, coming in with the scent of the wind on her suit and the rose of it in her cheeks. "Aren't you sick to see me? Old Turner said this morning I might use my hand, so I came straight off. But what have you been doing to yourself? You look half starved—doesn't he, Birdie? Have you had any lunch? If you haven't it's very wrong of you, and I shall just stand over you till it's gone—do you hear?"
Denis, laughing, lingered to shake hands with Miss Byrd, who always satisfied the proprieties by escorting her young friend, before following his impetuous pupil into the parlor. Dorothea was scornfully inspecting the remains of the meal.
"H'm! One sausage—I know it can't be more, for Rogers never gives you more than seven, at the outside, to the pound—it's not half enough for you. This room's hatefully uncomfortable, too," she added, frowning round with eyes which saw it all anew. Dorothea was blind to beauty, but wide awake to comfort, especially somebody else's comfort. "I should like to talk to that Simpson woman. I'd soon make her sit up! I think she neglects you shamefully. You're looking quite pale—isn't he, Birdie?—and I know it's all her fault. I've no use at all for a woman who can't keep her own people comfy!"
It was a novel experience for Denis to be scolded for neglecting himself. "I assure you Miss Simpson's guiltless," he said, smiling. "I've had a bit of a rush lately, that's all. I've not been able to get out these last few days."
"Well, you're coming out with me this afternoon, or I'll know the reason why. I can't have you looking like this," retorted Dorothea, nodding her decision; and then, with a sudden beguiling change, clasping both hands over his arm: "You're going to let me do straights on my own to-day, aren't you? You almost promised you would, last time!"
Denis looked down on her hands, as though he found them a very pleasing adornment to his sleeve. "We'll see," he said, and from that he would not budge, for all her coaxing. He was inordinately cautious in his tuition. They left Miss Byrd tucked up by the fire with a book, and Denis went down to the hangars, while Dorothea got into her flying kit. He was never tired of dinning into his pupil's ears the duty of prudence, and certainly he set the example himself. When Dorothea appeared at the sheds, in her tan leather coat and leggings and safety helmet, she found her instructor tuning up the machine, and had to wait as patiently as she might till he had done.
The morning until ten o'clock had been white and chill with one of those luminous, snowy September fogs, which clear off into noons of sapphire. The sky was astoundingly blue, the meadow insolently green, the sheds all hard-edged, vivid, with keen black shadows. In the full blaze of sunshine stood the monoplane, tall in front where the long brown blades of the propeller cleared the ground, sloping down towards the fin-like tail planes, and spreading its pale wings in curves not unlike those of the gulls which sailed by, calling and fishing over the marshes.
Dorothea climbed into her seat, Denis took his place beside her, the men behind let go, and off they went, skimming fast and faster over the grass, gaining speed and power for soaring. The elevator tilted, and they parted from the earth, the moment imperceptible; only the country, which had lain ahead, spread out suddenly below them like a carpet. There were the green marshes, ruled out like a chess-board with glistening waterways, and bordered with the dark blue sea: the farm, and the sheds, and the outbuildings, all like toys made of cardboard and glittering tin.
After circling over the aerodrome to get his height, Denis turned his back on the coast and flew inland. As they passed, the great farm horses plunged and fidgeted, the laborers stood still in the fields, peering up from under their hands, the cottagers ran out into the road to watch them overhead. Some said: "Well, I wouldn't be up in one of them things for a thousand pounds!" and others: "Silly fools! serve 'em right if they break their necks!" The Englishman, in fact, received the novelty as he receives any strange thing or person, in the spirit summed once and for all by Punch. Not that Denis had any right to grumble. Except with regard to his work, he was just as conservative, just as ready to heave his half-brick as any Bill among them.