"I want that money for an object," repeated Miss Million's American cousin. And then he went on, at last, to tell us what "the object" was.
It took a long time. It was very complicated. It was full of technical terms that were absolute Greek to me, as well as to Million. There 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?"
"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?"
"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.
"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.
"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.