Wild Wings eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 480 pages of information about Wild Wings.

Wild Wings eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 480 pages of information about Wild Wings.

Geoffrey had been exceedingly reluctant to have his young cousin take the long journey alone though she had laughed at his fears and his wife had abetted her in her disregard of possible disastrous consequences, telling him that women no longer required wrapping in tissue paper.  The war had changed all that.

At his insistence however Ruth had finally consented to wear her mother’s wedding ring as a sort of shadowy protection.  He had an idea that the small gold band, being presumptive evidence of an existing male guardian somewhere in the offing might serve to keep away the ill intentioned or over bold from his lovely little heiress cousin about whom he worried to no small degree.

They had gone their separate ways, he to the fierce fighting of May, nineteen hundred and sixteen, she to her long journey and subsequent strange adventures.  At first no one had thought it unnatural that they heard nothing from Elinor.  Letters went easily astray those days.  Geoffrey was weeks without news even from his wife and poor Roderick was by this time beyond communication of any kind, his name labeled with that saddest of all tags—­missing.  It was not until Geoffrey was out of commission with that last worst knock out, lying insensible, more dead than alive in a hospital “somewhere in France” that the others began to realize that Elinor had vanished utterly from the ken of all who knew her.  Some one who knew her by sight had chanced to see her in California and had noted the wedding ring, hence the “unsubstantiated rumor” of her marriage in San Francisco, a rumor which Nancy half frantic over her husband’s desperate illness was the only person who was in a position to explain.

When Geoffrey came slowly back to the land of the living it was to learn that his cousin Roderick was still reported missing and that Elinor was even more sadly and mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth in spite of all effort to discover her fate.  It had been a tragic coming back for the sick man.  But an Englishman is hard to down and gradually he got back health and a degree of hope and happiness.  There would be no more fighting for him but the War Department assured him there were plenty of other ways in which he could serve the cause and he had readily placed himself at their disposal for the recruiting work in which he had already demonstrated his power to success in Australia.

Which brings us to the Canadian training camp and Ted Holiday.  Captain Annersley had been asked as he had told Larry to speak to the boys.  He had done so, given a little straight talk of what lay ahead of them and what they were fighting for, bade them get in a few extra licks for him since he was out of it for good, done for, “crocked.”  In conclusion he had begged them give the Huns hell.  It was all he asked of them and from the look of them he jolly well knew they would do it.

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Project Gutenberg
Wild Wings from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.