The Cost of Wings and Other Stories

Excerpt: Sheldrick, returning, refreshed and exhilarated, from a spin with a friend who had brought down a racing car of forty horse-power and an enthusiasm to match, found his wife sitting in the same chair, in the same attitude, as it seemed to him, in which he had left her, in the bare, dull sitting-room of their quarters at the Pavilion Hotel, on the edge of Greymouth Links, from which starting point Sheldrick, in fulfilment of his recent engagement with the Aero Club of France, had arranged to take wing for Cherbourg, wind and weather permitting, on the morrow. It would be difficult exceedingly to imagine Caruso as an engineer or a bank manager, or in any capacity other than that of operatic star. It would be equally difficult to picture Shackleton as a side-splitting antic and quip-monger, or Pélissier in the rôle of the dauntless explorer. Sheldrick, the most recent idol of the flying world, was the type-ideal of the aviator.