Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/84

 'Thanks, dear,' I replied. 'I'm feeling much better to-day. Teddy was in this morning, and he told me that you'd made a flight soon after breakfast. How far did you go? I thought you intended to rest for a bit?'

'I went to Chelmsford,' she replied. 'I had a little engine-trouble before I got back, and had to come down in somebody's park. I think it was somewhere near Watford. But I was able to put it right and get home, if a trifle lamely.'

'So Bertie Maynard told me,' remarked Lionel. 'I saw him in the club just before lunch, and he said that you'd had engine-trouble.'

'Oh, it wasn't very much really. Only, after Claude's smash, I'm rather careful,' she said.

'One should always take every precaution,' declared Lionel seriously, as he rose and gave her his chair opposite me. 'A lot of the boys are far too daring nowadays. They've followed Pegoud, and take needless risks long before they are qualified to do so. It's easy enough to make the sensational loop if you are a practised hand. But when half-trained pupils try and attempt it—well, they're bound to make a mess of it.'

Roseye glanced at me for a moment, and I knew that she was annoyed at Lionel's presence. He was a good enough fellow in his place as a friend of her family, and a gossip who entertained her father so constantly, but she had no desire that he should be present at what she had intended should be a cosy tête-à-tête over our tea and muffins.

'Well. Have you seen the papers to-day?' I asked, in order to change the subject. 'They