At that moment a stout dark-faced woman, wearing the typical gypsy garb, broad, bright-colored skirt and dazzling silk scarf tied about her head, was alighting from a small cabin-type monoplane. The plane was like a huge dragon fly. It had a bottle-green body and silver wings that glistened like glass in the sun.
The stout, dark woman was followed by a girl of some eight years. And after her, in a pilot’s garb, came a golden-haired girl who did not look a day over eighteen.
“It’s strange!” Rosemary’s tone expressed her surprise. “I saw those same people in Chicago, just before we took off. And now, here they are right with us.”
“Not so strange,” replied the pilot. “That giant bug of hers may be quite speedy. They probably took off later than we did and just in time to miss the storm.
“But look!” he exclaimed, “If that sort of thing is allowed to go on, what is to come of this bright new thing we call aviation? There’ll be a crack-up every day in the week. The papers will be full of them and no one will dare to travel by air. And all that because of rank amateurs and lax regulations. I’m starting an investigation right now.”
“Nice plane you have,” he said to the golden-haired girl.
“Oh yes, but perhaps a little too small.” The girl spoke with a pleasing foreign accent.
“You’re not a gypsy?” The veteran pilot smiled in spite of himself.
“But no.” The girl smiled back. “Not entirely. I am French. People call me Petite Jeanne. I was adopted by gypsies in France. Oh so good, Christian gypsies! This lady is Mrs. Bihari, my foster mother.”
“I suppose,” said Mark with a laugh, “that you traded a flivver for an automobile, the auto for a better one, the better one for a poor airplane, the poor plane for a good one?”