ere she
sat in the big basket-chair, with the coloured cushions behind her dark
head; her grey eyes wide open, and fixed, defensively, upon the face of
this young man with a story to tell.

To cut it short, it was this. About a year ago Mr. Hiram P. Jessop had
left off being manager of the pork factory belonging to the late Samuel
Million because of his other work. He was, he said, "no factory boss by
nature." He was an inventor. He had invented a machine--yes! This was
where the technical terms began raining thick and fast upon our
bewildered ears--a machine for dropping bombs from aeroplanes----

"Bombs? Good heavens alive!" interrupted Miss Million, with a look of
real horror on her little face. "D'you mean them things that go off?"

"Why, I guess I hope they'd go off," returned the young man with the
shrewd and courteous smile. "Certainly that would be the idea of
them--to go off! Why, yes!"

"Then--are you," said Million, gazing reproachfully upon him, "one of
these here anarchists?"

He shook his mouse-coloured head.

"Do I look like one, Cousin Nellie? Nothing further from my thoughts
than anarchy. The last thing I'd stand for."

"Then whatever in the wide world d'you want to go dropping bombs for?"
retorted my young mistress. "Dropping 'em on who, I should like to
know?"

"On the enemy, I guess."

"Enemy?"

"Sure thing. I wouldn't want to be dropping them on our own folks now,
would I?" said the young American in his pleasant, reasonable voice;
while I, too, gazed at him in wonder at the unexpected things that came
from his firm, clean-shaven lips.

He began again to explain.

"Now you see, Cousin Nellie and Miss Smith, I am taking the aeroplane as
it will be. Absolutely one of the most important factors in modern
warfare----"

"But who's talking about war?" asked the bewildered Million.

"I am," said the young American.

"War?" repeated his cousin. "But gracious alive! Where is there any,
nowadays?"

The glimpse of English landscape outside the window seemed to echo her
question.

There seemed to be no memory of such a terrible and strenuous thing as
war among those gently sloping Sussex Downs, where the white chalk
showed in patches through the close turf, and where the summer haze,
dancing above that chalk, made all the distances deceptive.

From the top of those downs the country, I knew, must look flat as
coloured maps. They lay spread out, those squares and oblongs of
pearl-gr