The silver ship began to circle as for a landing. Jeanne shuddered. What if this strange visitor of the night should land close to her own tiny plane! She was about to spring up and dash for the tent, when a vision of extraordinary beauty caught her eye. The plane, having arrived at a point directly above her leafy bower, formed a gleaming white background against which the red and gold of maple leaves stood out like the colors of the most costly tapestries.
So lost in her contemplation of this was the little French girl, she did not miss the plane when it was gone. The after-image lingered on the picture walls of her mind.
“It is gone!” she cried softly at last, “Gone!” So it was. As if swallowed up by the night, the silver ship had vanished.
“Perhaps it has gone over to the depot,” she told herself. “I may see that mysterious ship in the morning.”
Then, as if in need of companionship and protection, she rolled up her thin mattress and disappeared within the tent.
“There is a plane by the depot, a silver plane!” Jeanne exclaimed excitedly the moment she thrust her head from the tent next morning. “I must see it. There was one that glowed white all over last night. Is this the one? I must know.”
Since it was some distance to the depot Jeanne, using her plane as another might an automobile, warmed up the motor and went taxiing over.
To Madame’s vast astonishment, ten minutes later as the silver plane went gliding over the field to at last rise in air, Jeanne’s dragon fly went speeding on its trail and, in an astonishingly short time, both planes were lost in the blue.
CHAPTER XV
LADY COP OF THE SKY
But we must not forget Florence. At Danby Force’s request, she had arranged for a dance in the Community House. “Call it a waltz night,” he suggested. “All these older people love the old-fashioned dances and the waltz is the best of them all.”