of Taubes, Farmans, and Zeppelins.

In a few weeks the mere land and sea battles which she read to Miss
Fowler after breakfast passed her like idle breath. Her heart and her
interest were high in the air with Wynn, who had finished 'rolling'
(whatever that might be) and had gone on from a 'taxi' to a machine more
or less his own. One morning it circled over their very chimneys,
alighted on Vegg's Heath, almost outside the garden gate, and Wynn came
in, blue with cold, shouting for food. He and she drew Miss Fowler's
bath-chair, as they had often done, along the Heath foot-path to look at
the bi-plane. Mary observed that 'it smelt very badly.'

'Postey, I believe you think with your nose,' said Wynn. 'I know you
don't with your mind. Now, what type's that?'

'I'll go and get the chart,' said Mary.

'You're hopeless! You haven't the mental capacity of a white mouse,' he
cried, and explained the dials and the sockets for bomb-dropping till it
was time to mount and ride the wet clouds once more.

'Ah!' said Mary, as the stinking thing flared upward. 'Wait till our
Flying Corps gets to work! Wynn says it's much safer than in the
trenches.'

'I wonder,' said Miss Fowler. 'Tell Cheape to come and tow me home
again.'

'It's all downhill. I can do it,' said Mary, 'if you put the brake on.'
She laid her lean self against the pushing-bar and home they trundled.

'Now, be careful you aren't heated and catch a chill,' said overdressed
Miss Fowler.

'Nothing makes me perspire,' said Mary. As she bumped the chair under
the porch she straightened her long back. The exertion had given her a
colour, and the wind had loosened a wisp of hair across her forehead.
Miss Fowler glanced at her.

'What do you ever think of, Mary?' she demanded suddenly.

'Oh, Wynn says he wants another three pairs of stockings--as thick as we
can make them.'

'Yes. But I mean the things that women think about. Here you are, more
than forty--'

'Forty-four,' said truthful Mary.

'Well?'

'Well?' Mary offered Miss Fowler her shoulder as usual.

'And you've been with me ten years now.'

'Let's see,' said Mary. 'Wynn was eleven when he came. He's twenty now,
and I came two years before that. It must be eleven.'

'Eleven! And you've never told me anything that matters in all that
while. Looking back, it seems to me that _I_'ve done all the talking.'

'I'm afraid I'm not much of a conversationalist. As Wynn says, I haven't
the mind. Let me t