to the door of the airport depot. If you see it you will know that I have been there and may be there still.”

“I get you,” Rosemary laughed, “but what do you call that?”

“It is our gypsy patteran,” the girl explained soberly. “It is a custom older than any of your country’s laws.”

“Good! I’ll be seeing you!” Rosemary hurried away. She was not soon to forget this blonde-haired Petite Jeanne, whom so many of you already know well. Nor was she to forget that even the gypsies had taken to the air.

After casting a practiced eye over the interior of her ship, adjusting a chair and looking to her supply of newspapers and magazines, Rosemary stepped down from the plane into the sunlight of a glorious day.

A porter was wheeling the baggage cart into position, the chain was being dropped. In an even tone through a microphone the announcer was saying, “Plane No. 56 leaving for Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City and points west, now loading.”

“We’ll be in the air soon,” Rosemary whispered to herself. The faintest possible thrill ran up her spine. For this very-much-alive girl, even after two years of flying, could never quite still the joy and thrill of flight.

Then the sound of an excited voice reached her ears.

“I must take the bag with me in the cabin,” a woman’s voice was saying.

“But that is contrary to the rules,” the attendant at the gate replied politely. “The cabin is small. A brief case is quite all right. But bags, no. If everyone took a bag inside, there’d be no getting about. We will give you a check for your bag. It will be locked in the baggage compartment. Nothing can happen to it. In case of loss, the Company’s millions insure you.”

“But I want—” The tall, dark-complexioned owner of the bag cast a sweeping glance over her fellow travelers who stood awaiting their turn at the gate. She appeared to suspect them, one and all, of having designs on her bag.

The much-traveled commercial passengers smiled indulgently, two ladies gave the dark-complexioned one a half sympathetic glance. But the young man who had, through Rosemary’s good offices, so recently acquired a place on the plane favored her with not so much as a look. He appeared to have become greatly interested in a small yellow plane that was just then taking off.

“He just seems to be interested in that plane.” The thought leapt unbidden into the young stewardess’ mind. “He’s more interested in that woman than he’d like anyone to know. I wonder why?”

“Oh well, if you insist!” The dark-complexioned lady dropped her bag, grabbed impatiently at the check offered for it, then hurrying past Rosemary without affording her so much as a look, climbed aboard the plane to sink into the seat farthest to the rear.

“As if she proposed to watch the others all the way to Salt Lake City,” was Rosemary’s mental comment, although she knew the thought to be unwarranted and absurd.

Ten minutes later, with all on board, they were sailing out over the city. Rosemary settled down to the business of the hour. She loved her work, did this slender girl. Hers was an unusual task. She performed it unusually well. She was in charge of the “ship” while it was in the air. She was hostess to the ten passengers entrusted to her care. At once her alert mind took up the problems of this particular journey. She smiled as two of the four traveling men launched forth on a discussion of the country’s economic problems. “That settles them,” she told herself. The third traveling man buried himself in the latest newspaper, and the fourth dragged out papers from his brief case to pour over figures. Two rather flashily dressed young men, who had not slept the night before, asked for pillows. They were soon checked off to the land of dreams. Two middle-aged women began discussing the feeding and training of children.

All this left to Rosemary’s care only the dark-complexioned woman in a rear seat and the young man of great haste. “A very quiet trip,” she told herself. In this, as all too often, she was mistaken.

“What can I do for you?” She flashed a smile at the dark-complexioned woman. She received no smile in reply.

“Nothing.”

“Magazine? A pillow?”

“No. Nothing.” The woman’s black and piercing eyes were fixed upon her for a full ten seconds. Then they shifted to the world beneath the swiftly gliding plane.

Rosemary was neither dismayed nor disheartened. There were many such people. All they wanted was to be left alone with their thoughts. Perhaps flashing through the air thousands of feet from the ground brought serious and solemn thoughts to some types of mind. She rather guessed it did.

But how about the young man of great haste? He intrigued her. Perhaps he was the kind who liked to talk. If he were, then perhaps he would tell secrets. Men often told her secrets. She always guarded them well. “He may tell me why he was in such great haste,” she thought to herself.

Some people like to talk, some to listen. It is the duty of an airplane stewardess to talk or to listen as occasion demands. Rosemary was prepared in this case, as in all others, to do her duty.

“Strange sort of profession, yours,” the young man said, smiling.

“It’s wonderful work!” Rosemary knew on the instant that she would do most of the talking.

For half an hour he asked questions and she answered them. His questions, never very personal, were about the life an airplane stewardess leads. She answered them honestly and frankly. “He honestly wants to know,” she told herself. “He is the type of person who absorbs knowledge as a sponge does water. Delightful sort. I’d like to know him better.”

“But look!” he exclaimed suddenly. “The propeller on this side is gone!”

“Oh, no!” She laughed low. “It’s not gone. Just going around so fast you can’t see it.”

“But I saw it revolving when we started.”

“We were going slowly then.”

“So it is really still there, producing tremendous power, helping pull us along—tons of people, mail and steel—at a hundred and seventy miles an hour! And yet we cannot see it. Marvelous! Unseen power!

“Do you know,” he said, “that’s like God’s influence on our lives. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it as we feel things with our hands; yet it is there, a tremendous force in our lives.”

“Yes,” she agreed soberly, “it must be like that.”

At that moment she found herself liking this strange young man very much. It was, she believed, because of his deeply serious thoughts.

Having discovered that the two traveling salesmen had settled all the nation’s problems and were looking for reading material, she excused herself, gripped the seat ahead to steady her, then moved swiftly forward.

With all her passengers happy once more, she dropped into the one vacant seat to indulge in a few moments of quiet meditation. Into this meditation there crept, as she closed her eyes, a slim girlish figure. Blonde-haired and smiling, she stood beside a plane that resembled a dragon fly.

“The flying gypsy,” she whispered. “But is she a gypsy?” To this question she found no answer.

That this slender girl was an interesting person she did not doubt. She found herself hoping that the gypsy woman’s fortune telling might prove a success—that they might meet many times.

“Mystery and adventure, those were the words she used.” Mystery and adventure. Well, this day had not