“Because—” a strange little smile played around the chief stewardess’ mouth. “Because our airplane cabins are just so big and we have to get girls that fit the cabins,—five feet four inches, a hundred and twenty pounds; those are the limits. Can be smaller, but never larger.”
“Oh!” Florence stared for a moment, then burst out in good-natured laughter. “I—I guess I won’t do.”
She was gone before the truly kind-hearted stewardess could tell her how sorry she was.
Florence was still smiling when she left the building. But the smile did not last. It is always hard, for even the strongest hearted to be in a great city alone and with no one near who will say, “You may help me do this.”
She walked slowly and quite soberly over the cinder path that led to the airport depot. Arrived there, she walked in and looked about her. There was something about the place that stirred her strangely. “Such movement! Such a wonderful feeling of abundant life!”
She walked through the door that led to the landing field. Once outside, she stood spellbound. A giant silver plane, looking more like a huge sea bird than any man-made thing, came gliding down the runway to wheel gracefully about and into position. From somewhere came the barking notes of an announcer: “Plane No. 43 eastbound for Toledo, Buffalo and New York, now loading.” She saw the smiling passengers following redcaps to the plane as they might have to a train, caught the signal, watched the plane roll away, heard the thunder of its motors, then saw it rise slowly in air and speed away.
“That—” her voice caught. Experienced as she was in the ways of the world, a tear glistened in her eye as she murmured hoarsely, “That is what I wanted to become a part of. And they won’t let me be—because I’m too big.”
She turned about to hide that tear. Next instant she was staring fascinated at three tiny objects lying close to the wall, three tiny sticks, two parallel and one crossing them at a sharp angle. “Jeanne! Petite Jeanne!” she all but cried aloud. “Jeanne has been here, not long ago either. That is her gypsy patteran!”
“Listen!” In her excitement she grasped the arm of an attendant. “Was there a slim blonde-haired girl here a little while ago?”
“Plenty of them,” the attendant grinned good-naturedly, “mebby twenty.”