The Boy with Wings
By Ruck, Berta
Classic work by Ruck, Berta.
Table of Contents
_MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914_ CHAPTER PAGE I AERIAL LIGHT HORSE 3 II THE BOSO...
_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_ I THE AVIATION DINNER 223 II THE WHISPER OF WAR 235 III ...
_SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN_ I A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON 335 II THE SOUL OF UNDINE 345 III A...
AERIAL LIGHT HORSE Hendon! An exquisite May afternoon, still and sunny. Above, a canopy of unflecked sapphire-blue. Below, the broad khaki-green expanse of the flying-ground, whe...
THE BOSOM-CHUMS Through leafy side-streets and little squares of Georgian houses, Gwenna's taxi took her to a newer road that sloped sharply from the Heath at the top to the churc...
THE EYES OF ICARUS Gwenna, who was always bubbling over with young curiosity about the fresh _people_ whom she was to meet at a party, had never taken overmuch interest in the _pl...
THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES "Now isn't life _extraordinary_?" thought Gwenna Williams, incoherently in the drawing-room as she sat on the yellow Empire sofa under the mirror, holding...
THE WORKADAY WORLD The day after the dinner-party was spent by Gwenna metaphorically, at least, in the clouds. By her vivid day-dreams she was carried off, as Ganymede was carrie...
THE INVITATION At last six o'clock found her, released from the day's work and back at her Club. But still, still there was no envelope addressed to Miss Gwenna Williams stuck up...
A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY The first of a series of "things that got in the way" of Gwenna's making an appointment to go flying occurred on that Sunday afternoon, when Leslie and she ...
LAUGHING ODDS Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His _fiancee_! There! I might have _known_ he was engaged. I might have guessed it! It's nothing to do with...
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY Eagerly as Gwenna longed to fly, she was not to do so even yet. After that appointment made at Hugo Swayne's rooms she lived through a fortnight of dreaming,...
LESLIE, ON "THE ROOTS OF THE ROSE" Leslie Long was lounging in a rickety deck-chair under the acacia tree that overshadowed the small lawn behind the Ladies' Residential Club. Mis...
THE HEELS OF MERCURY This injunction Gwenna carried out to the letter a week later. Never had she looked so pretty as when she smiled at her own reflection in her bedroom mirror a...
THE KISS WITHHELD He did not pass. He stopped--Gwenna felt the touch of his finger on the silver tip of her shoe. All a-tremble with delight she moved aside, and stepped from beh...
THE FLYING DREAM "_Those dreams come true that are dreamed on Midsummer night!_" This saying Gwenna had read somewhere. But she had forgotten all about it until, on the night of ...
AN AWAKENING The sore of that jealousy still smarted in the girl's mind as she turned her pillow restlessly.... She could not sleep until long after the starlings had been twitter...
LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE" It seemed to be decided for Gwenna that she should, after all, give notice at the office. For on the evening of the day of her climb up the scaffolding ...
THE AEROPLANE LADY Curiously enough, Gwenna did think of it again. On the Saturday morning after that walk and talk she took that long dull train-journey. The only bright spot on...
LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE" She'd said, "Supposing the moon _did_ fall into your lap, Taffy? Suppose that young Cloud-Dweller of yours did (a) take you flying, and (b) propose to you?" a...
THE OBVIOUS THING She was in this mood to win a waiting game on the day that Paul Dampier came down to the Aircraft Works. This was just one of the more wonderful happenings that...
THE SEALED BOX Whatever the Aeroplane Lady thought to herself about the two in the Wing-room, there was no trace of it in her brisk greeting to Paul Dampier. "I hope you haven't ...
THE AVIATION DINNER Gwenna began to feel a little nervous and intimidated, even in the car that took herself and the Aeroplane Lady and the Airman to the Aviation dinner. A hundr...
THE "WHISPER OF WAR" She said it after the dinner had broken up. In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with his offer of motoring her to her Hotel firs...
THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE Never had Gwenna risen so early after having spent so little of a night in sleep! Into the small hours she had crouched in her kimono on the edge of Lesl...
THAT WEEK-END For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not been bargained for, those lovers apart again. The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner...
THE DIE IS CAST On Sunday morning she and Leslie went to Church. In the afternoon they walked again, aimlessly. She felt that she was only living until Monday, until his return t...
HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if ever the girl wish...
HASTE TO THE WEDDING! The Tuesday morning that brought Gwenna's wedding-day as the morning of the official declaration of war. It was in all the papers over which the girls at th...
THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderbolt moment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only been her husba...
THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT" The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of the khaki-clad sentry at the entrance. He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road ...
LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS" Now, as it happened, Miss Leslie Long did not choose to wait for her invitation to the Aircraft Works. Unasked and unexpected, she turned up there ...
A LOVE LETTER--AND A ROSE A couple of days after Leslie's visit Gwenna was moving about the bedroom at Mrs. Crewe's cottage. It was an old-fashioned, quaintly pretty room. The lo...
A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON The morning after Paul Dampier's arrival from the Front he and his wife started off on the honeymoon trip that had been for so many weeks deferred. They moto...
THE SOUL OF UNDINE "Hul-lo!" he shouted. The echo answered as he sat in the boat staring about him.... Then he felt a twitch at one of his sculls. It turned in his hand; was wren...
A LAST FAVOUR That thought at the heart of Gwenna seemed to grow with every hour that passed. And they were passing now so rapidly, the hours that remained to her with her husban...
THE DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE Gwenna sat, for the first time in her life, in an aeroplane. She had very little actual notion of how she came to be there. It was all confused in her mi...
THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT Yes; at last it was flight. She now, too, was perched up on this structure that had tucked those little bicycle wheels and skids underneath it, as a bird tucks...
THE WINGED VICTORY Now Gwenna, although she'd been clerk and assistant to the Aeroplane Lady herself, and although she loved the idea of aeroplanes as other girls have loved the i...