Mary said never a word, just stood there, blinking in the sun.
Then an attractive young lady came up close. “I’m Judy Pierce from the big school for girls here. I heard you were to arrive and I wish you would be my guest while you’re here.”
“That would be just fine—I—I—guess. How about it and how long?” Mary asked Sparky.
“Ought to be swell. How long? That I can’t tell.”
“This is a city,” Judy Pierce said. “We have phones and everything. We can keep in touch with you at the airport.”
“That will be quite all right,” Sparky agreed.
“Speech! We want a speech!” some boy from Kansas, Iowa, or Oklahoma shouted.
“Speech! Speech! Speech!” came in a chorus.
“I can’t make a speech,” Mary’s voice carried across the field. “All I can do is to fly a plane, and I don’t know too much about that. But it does make me feel as if I had gone round the world and got back home to see you all here. I know now, as I never knew before, that the sun never really sets on the Army of the U.S.A.”