"Oh, you bully l'ill boy! If I hadn't been kept so busy would have gone round to jolly you up a bit. But I kept hearin' from you all the same."
This from Milton, or "Milt" Finzer, a Louisville lad, now in the Royal Flying Corps for more than a year. "Don't it seem wallopin' to see you in the clubroom again!"
"Orry, you stale mutt," this from an Americanized Pole, without a trace of foreign accent, "I'm too glad to see you to talk much about it. When we bombers got back from the raid that night and neither you nor Lafe had showed up, I felt bad enough. Later when Lafe came in with a German plane and a half dead Boche inside, we felt better. But we missed you, Orry."
"Did you really and truly miss me?" Erwin asked, this not in a spirit of doubt or incredulity, but only to hear his friend reemphasize it. One likes at times to have welcome truisms reechoed over again. It is human nature I suppose.
"Look here, Lex Brodno, you're a Pole —"
"Don't spring that on me again, even in joke I am an American, it my folks did come over from Warsaw."
"Bully! We're all one over here. That's the way to talk!" Erwin was getting back his old-time spirits. "All one in the good old U.S. All one over here — eh? Oh, you sinner!" The two walked over to a table, interrupted at every turn by those who wanted to welcome Orry back to the club again.
The following morning Erwin resumed his daily stunt of practice, but was heightened mightily in spirit by noticing in the hangar where he had usually gotten his machines a bright new scouting plane, small, with a tail like a dolphin's, an up-to-date machine gun mounted along the top, just where the one pilot at the wheel could handily squint through the sights.
"Why, it's British — one of their latest makes," informed Erwin, much pleased. "It's — let's see." He was squinting at the monogram. "B-X-3. No. 48."
Just then Blaine and Finzer strolled up.