“What? I didn’t know you thought of going,” put in Patty, surprised.
“Yes, I’ve settled the preliminaries and I’m waiting further orders.”
“Going to Wilmington? Why, we won’t see you any more, then.”
“You don’t seem terribly upset over that! But, you will see me, I’m afraid. Wilmington is not so very far off, and the course is neither long nor strenuous. Why, it only takes about four months in all.”
“And then will you really fly? Up in the air, in big machines?”
“And will you fall and break your neck? They say they all do.”
“I’ll not promise to do that, unless you insist upon it. And it isn’t done as much as formerly, I believe.”
“Why are you two sparring so?” asked Nan, laughingly. “Aren’t you good friends, at the moment?”
“As good as anybody can be, when the lady he admires has been and went and gone and engaged herself to somebody else,” and Philip frowned darkly.
“Oho, so that’s it! Well, our young friend here is certainly engaged to her big Western suitor. Now, shall I look out for a sweet little girl for you?”
“No, thank you, Ma’am, it’s a case of Patty or nobody, where I’m concerned. But the game’s never out till it’s played out. Patty and Farnsworth may one or both of them yet change their minds.”
“You wouldn’t think so, if you saw them together,” laughed Nan. “They’re just about the most engagedest pair you ever saw!”
“Oh, come now,” said Patty, “we don’t show our affection in public, Nan!”
“Well, you have great difficulty not to do so. It’s all you can do, to hide it successfully.”
“And why should they?” asked Phil. “There’s no law against that sort of thing, is there?”
“Tell me more about your aviating,” said Patty, by way of changing the subject. “What do you do to learn?”
“Dunno myself, yet. They say the only way to learn to swim is to be thrown into the water. So I daresay the way to learn to fly, is to get in an aeroplane and start.”
“Then I will be taught. But I’m going to be a good aviator. I’m sure I’ll like the stunt, and I want to begin as soon as possible.”
“I wish I could do some war work,” and Patty sighed.
“Good gracious!” said Nan, “I don’t know any girl who does more of it than you do, Patty! When you’re not down in that old office doing clerical work, you’re knitting like a house afire. And you are on two or three committees and you write slogans for the Food people and for the Liberty Loan Bonds, and oh, I don’t know what all you do!”