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You had flown high and far indeed, Jerry—and you had not returned. For ever and for ever! Burn faster, flame!

“My blessed child, who’s been frightening you? Airplanes are by all odds safer than taxis, and no end safer than the infernal duffer who’s been chaffing you would be if I could once get my hands on him. Damn fool! Don’t care if you do hate swearing; damn fools are damn fools, and there’s an end to it. All those statistics are sheer melodramatic rot; the chap who fired ’em at you probably has all his money invested in submarines, and is fairly delirious with jealousy. Peg (did I ever formally introduce you to Pegasus, the best pursuit-plane in the R.F.C.—or out of it?) Peg’s about as likely to let me down as you are! We’d do a good deal for each other, she and I; nobody else can really fly her, the darling! But she’d go to the stars for me—and farther still. Never you fear—we have charmed lives, Peg and I—we belong to Janie.

“I think that people make an idiotic row about dying, anyway. It’s probably jolly good fun, and I can’t see what difference a few years here would make if you’re going to have all eternity to play with. Of course you’re a ghastly little heathen, and I can see you wagging a mournful head over this already—but every time that I remember what a shocking sell the After Life (exquisite phrase!) is going to be for you, darling, I do a bit of head-wagging myself, and it’s not precisely mournful! I can’t wait to see your blank consternation, and you needn’t expect any sympathy from me. My very first words will be, ‘I told you so!’ Maybe I’ll rap them out to you with a table-leg!