Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 234, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1918 — Betty and the Bird Man [ARTICLE]

Betty and the Bird Man

By DOROTHY DCUGLAS

(Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) Betty’s eyes were a wonderful blue and her hair a dusky brown, her lips were like poppy buds and her teeth were—-but the lonely airman who flew dally over Betty’s garden did not know all this. Neither did he know or even suspect that Betty was as lonely as he. Betty’s garden was walled in by a great brick walk But there was much to do in the garden andgthe lieutenant of the American flying corps who had come over to England to fly with his allies found and watched the pink-clad figure as he flew daily over the Essex homes. lieutenant French had sailed on the big Cunarder with many troops some three months before, and each day of the three months had brought a more sickening sense of loneliness. His home in Long Island was just a modest country cottage, but there was a garden, a cat, his dog Binks and a family that the young lieutenant thought the finest in the world. >, He had been flying very low, almost brushing the tree tops of Epping forest, when suddenly at the very edge of the forest he looked down into a garden that made his heart beat with home-sickness. There was a pink-clad girl working among the flowers. That was all he had seen the first day. After that one glimpse of the beautiful Essex garden Lleutenajft French flew dally over the spot and watched Betty garden or paint or do bits of. carpentering that made him quite desperate to help her. On days when the wind or rain prevented the great wings of his Bristol from taking him aloft and thd big bird was a prisoner in the hangar, the .flying man chafed inwardly. When the moon was bright and the Huns were making attempts to cross the coast, he wanted only to fly above Betty’s garden and, in a sense, feel that he was protecting her and her dear home from harm. The fruit blossoms were out and billowed out like foamy clouds in a sky below him when Lieutenant French had about come to the conclusion that he would have to come a cropper or drop down into that walled garden by accident if he were to live on in Essex. He did not know English girls well, and wondered as to how this one in the pink frock would accept a note were he to drop it into her garden.

Bat ■while the fruit blossoms were swaying beneath him and the sun whining gloriously, the American birdman found courage to drop his note, for the girl in the pink dress was evidently married, and it would be perfectly conventional to make friends, now that she was perfectly guarded. She had come out that morning and very tenderly, cautiously she had pushed a great wheel chair out over the flag stones and down the garden path until it rested beneath the fruit trees. And in. the chair was an offlcer, wounded hero of hers, whom she was wonderfully busy about until she left him comfortably enjoying the sunlit garden and his pipe. After that she went back to the cottage and returned with chairs and tables, and was soon busily engaged in painting them all a brilliant red. Lieutenant French could stand it no longer. He had painted garden chairs at home; in fact, he had left paint on almost everything there in the Long Island home, so that nothing would took shabby. “I say, sis, that Bristol pilot is either trying to sniff our apple blossoms or lift a few bricks from our chimney. Isn’t he a *beaut* of a birdl” Dick Raymond exclaimed enthusiastically, and watched the huge wings drop still lower. Betty and her brother could both see the birdman himself now, and while they waved their hands at him in admiration and greeting he dropped a small package, which landed almost at Betty’s feet The airplane went up and up, buzzing loudly. Betty picked up the missive and gave a little cry of delight. She unfurled a small American flag and waved it aloft. Her brother grinned appreciatively. “American!” they exclaimed in unison.

Betty opened the letter and read aloud: “May I come this afternoon and get acquainted? Am far from home and horribly lonesome. Holst the Stars and Stripes if I may come, please." "Poor duffer,” said Dick; “I hope you won’t turn him down, sis.” But Sis was very far from turning him down. She was, in fact, ready to shed a few tears for this lonely American. For answer, she lust climbed up on her stepladder and flaunted the small flag at the top of a young cedar tree. Swooping down again. Lieutenant French waved joyously, then flew away toward the aerodrome. In the afternoon he gave himself the most unusual pleasure of taking some exquisitely fresh jonquils to a lady. TSe quite reveled in the thrilling emotion that besieged him as he carried them toward the garden over Which he had oo often flown,

He was greeted as an old friend and taken directly into the small home dr* de. “Yankees! Whafr luck!” he ex-i claimed the moment he had shaken hands. “This is too good to-be true,” and he.found himself more than ever at home. “I have only been over about four months,” said Betty, after they had wheeled Dick into a comfortable nook beneath the fruit blossoms and were talking as fast as only the Yankee tongue can move. “My brother was so badly wounded that he’ was allowed to cable to me —said he couldn’t pull through to fight some more if I wasn’t here.” She laughed softly toward her brother.

“What ship did you come on?” asked the birdman, realizing already that he was more than glad to know Betty and her brother. He was discovering the wonderful charms that had been hidden to his bird’s eyes. He would be dissatisfied now to hover so far above Betty and her garden. ‘The Adriatic,” said Betty. “Good Lord, so did I! We must have been on the same trip. How in the name of—Did you arrive just after Christmas?” “I certainly did," acclaimed Betty, “and we mere civilians were mighty tired waiting for you military people to disembark. You must-have been ill all the way over, or Assuredly I would have seen you, even on so crowded a ship.” “That’s a little hot air for you, French,” laughed Dick. “Betty’s good at that.” “I was in my bunk the entire trip,” said French; “didn’t even know there was a woman on board, except the stewardess.” “Neither did I,” laughed Betty; “there was so much khaki I had no time even to glance about for girls.l’ “She evidently had the time of her young life,” commented Dick. “Here I was waiting in ghastly fear of her being torpedoed, and all the time she was flirting her head off with our best uniforms, and some of the British as well. From the number of letters the post girl brings here from France, I think my sister knew every officer on the ship.” “Don’t mind me,” put in French. “Officers who are seasick don’t count,” Betty told him, but the encouraging glance she sent into his eyes suggested a complete contradiction to her words.

“I may be a poor sailor,” the lieutenant laughed, “but as a birdman Til take some beating. Didn’t I find the only garden in the British isles, and, like a huge bee, come straight to the finest honey—*• “I had better be getting the tea,” Betty decided, with a delightfully heightened color speeding her progress.

“Tea in an English garden—isn’t this great?” and the birdman ensconced himself as if for life, while Dick Raymond gave him a thorough inspection and came to the conclusion that French would be a fine pal for himself, and for Betty—well, he figured that his sister would like her latest victim better than the last, anyway, and if she brought out her big apple pie for tea, with apples at a shilling a pound, rationed sugar and mighty little butter to be had, that she would have decided to like Lieutenant French much better than his predecessors. In the white kitchen Betty reached up for the pie.