“HE ... THRUST HIS HEAD AND SHOULDERS OUT OF THE WINDOW.”
Gaspard Javet heard it. He left his chair beside Catherine’s bed, crossed the floor on tip-toe and thrust his head and shoulders out of the window. He saw it, rubbed his eyes and looked again to make sure, then withdrew from the window and turned to the girl in the bed.
“Here he comes,” he said.
Catherine moved her head restlessly on the pillow. Her eyes were wide open, but she paid no attention to her grandfather’s remark. Instead, she put out a hand gropingly toward a mug of water which stood on a chair beside the bed. Gaspard went to her in one stride, raised her head on his arm and gave her a drink. She swallowed a sip or two with difficulty.
“Hark, Cathie girl,” he whispered. “Don’t ye hear it now? the hum o’ Tom’s flyin’-machine?”
“I’ve heard it for hours,” she answered faintly. “It isn’t true. It is in my poor head.”
“But I see it this very minute dear, when I looked out the winder. Thar it was, plain as a pancake, a-hummin’ home like a big June-bug. It’s Tom, I tell ye, and if he ain’t got a doctor with him then all the doctors has died! Don’t ye hear it gittin’ louder an’ louder?”
“Yes, it is growing louder,” she said, slowly, “louder than the noise in my head has ever been—as loud as when Tom flew down out of the dark that night and frightened you into the woods.”
Gaspard lowered her head to the pillow and hastened from the room in his socks. He was in such a hurry that he left the door open behind him and took the short, steep stairs at a slide. He got outside in time to see the ’plane sink below the top of the dark wall of forest, flatten out and run on the sod. He raced Mick Otter to it, shouting as he ran.
The doctor went up alone to see Catherine; while Tom, Mick and Gaspard sat on the back porch and stared at the resting ’plane without a word. Tom still had his great gloves on his hands, his goggles on his eyes and his fur-lined cap on his head.