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“Aye, the inflam’ble, insulating clothie around the bit wires,” put in Andrew.

“Reached over for my chemicals to right of seat—” an amber-brown speck in one of the boy’s stone-gray eyes flashed—“unbalanced plane, she side-slipped, and now ... it’s three thousand for a new ‘bus’ and I can’t take a girl up this morning.”

“Pemrose,” breathed Una.

“Yes, Pemrose. Pretty—Pem!”

“Easy there—easy there, with that right leg—my cock-o’-the-clouds!” Andrew was muttering. “You’ve ‘pulled a bone’ in that, I’m thinking.”

“Ouch! Have I? You look as if I had broken every bone in your body by falling a few hundred feet.”

The aviator glared at Una—then winked his mischievous brown spot.

She could not wink back. Behind the red note of misfortune was, still, for her, the note of mystery: an echo that seemed borne from that hum-haunted wood, the tear in the violet’s eye—a nettle where no nettle was.

She lifted her stung fingers, where the prickle had faded, and looked at them.

Still—still she was “sparrow-blasted” as Andrew’s queer figure put it, blighted to the core by a trifle—kicked by a paltry sparrow, as it were.