Strathdene was straining at the anchor like one of his own biplanes
with the wind nudging its wings. In Europe they were shooting down
airships by the score nearly every day and Strathdene wanted to go
back. "It's not fair to the Huns," he said. "They haven't had a
pot-shot at me for so long they'll forget I was ever over. And some
of those men that were corporals when I made my Ace, are Aces now
as well and they're crawling up on my score! I'll have to fly all
the time to catch up."
But he wanted to take with him his beauty. He was jealous of Uncle
Sam and afraid to trust Kedzie to him. The more inconvenient she
became to him the more determined he grew to overcome the obstacles
to her possession.
He abominated the necessity of taking his bride through the side
door of the court-house to the altar, but he would not give her up.
It looked, however, as if he would have to. And then he received
mysteriously an assignment to the inspection of flying-machines
purchased in the American market. Kedzie told him that it was a
Heaven-sent answer to her prayers, and he believed it.
But it was his poor mother's work; she had written to a friend in
the British Embassy imploring him to keep her precious boy out of
France as long as possible. Hecatombs of gallant young lords were
being butchered and she had lost a son, two brothers, a nephew,
and unnumbered friends. The whole nobility of Europe was as deep
in mourning as all the other grades of prestige.
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