The Mulberry Bush by Helen Topping Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

fly,” he answered, “I have my license.”
    They talked planes and engines then, and Virginia listened politely, remembering to keep her purse tight under her elbow. “All my worldly goods,” Mike had said. She looked far into the southward sky. “You couldn’t be cruel and fickle, Mike,” her heart was saying, “you couldn’t.”
    â€œWant to walk a little way?” Bruce Gamble invited, “These boys say it will be an hour, perhaps, before the relief plane gets here. They had to bring it all the way from Chicago.”
    The prairie sod was damp and springy with frost, and the wind was fresh and cool. The other passengers, five of them, all men, were huddled in a group, backs to the wind, collars turned up, telling yarns and laughing. The stewardess sat on the step of the plane, clasping her neat, uniformed knees with her arms, her smart little cap tilted over one eye. She looked drowsy and a little pale, and Virginia remembered that the girl had not slept all night; she had heard her light feet going up and down many times in the night. Virginia felt a bit light-headed herself from lack of sleep. She was grateful for the fresh, cold breath of the wind on her face and eyelids.
    Bruce Gamble talked well. “They’re reopening some very famous old diggings up there in the hills,” he said. “Mines that were abandoned in the eighties are being extended by new processes and new machinery. In a few spots they’re taking fortunes out of the gulches—not the millions they dug there fifty years ago, when men went wild, but enough to be profitable. I’d like a chance to show you some of it. Will you be up here long?”
    â€œNo longer than necessary to close my contracts. I have seven men to see—all rather widely scattered, from the map, and of course, I know very little about the country and the local transportation.”
    â€œPerhaps, if you are making your headquarters in Denver, I’ll see you again?”
    â€œPerhaps,” she was politely indefinite. “I’m Virginia Warfield—of the Harrison Bureau.”
    Presently a silver mote appeared against the sky, and then the other plane was down, and half a dozen mechanics with tool kits scrambled out of it.
    The baggage and mail were transferred swiftly, and this time Virginia did not wince and clutch at the arms of her seat when the plane lifted and roared into the sky.
    â€œI’ll be a flyer yet, Mike,” she said, to the passing clouds. “And then you won’t be able to escape from me.”
    She had been in her room only an hour when her telephone rang.
    â€œMiss Warfield? This is Bruce Gamble. Would you come down about seven and have dinner with a lonesome traveling salesman?”
    She couldn’t say, “Oh, I’m sorry—but you see I’m a married woman. My husband might not approve.” That would be absurd anyway, Mike would be the first to laugh at such an idea. So she said, “I think that would be very nice. I’ll come on one condition—that my dinner goes on my expense account.”
    He did not argue, and she liked his good taste in forbearing.
    â€œAt seven then? In the Casanova Room, downstairs.”
    She had letters to write, so she spent the next hour at the desk, but only one letter was finished—a long letter to Mike. She told him about flying.
    â€œI suppose some god on a faraway planet looked down and saw two specks floating above this earth, and they were you and me. And now I’m safely down again, and I hope you’ve landed, too.” She said nothing about Bruce Gamble. After all, she did not know Mike’s reactions very well—and things looked so different, so much less casual, set down in black and white. And undoubtedly, there would be lovely ladies in Lima, or Caracas, or other places, whom Mike would have to be gallant to—though the impression lingered in her mind that below