rubicund angel in a panama hat and a pepper-and-salt tweed suit
holding out a lifebelt. Cousin Christopher would take to Malvina as
some motherly hen to an orphaned duckling. A fairy discovered
asleep beside one of the ancient menhirs of Brittany. His only fear
would be that you might want to take her away before he had written
a paper about her. He would be down from Oxford at his cottage.
Commander Raffleton could not for the moment remember the name of
the village. It would come to him. It was northwest of Newbury.
You crossed Salisbury Plain and made straight for Magdalen Tower.
The Downs reached almost to the orchard gate. There was a level
stretch of sward nearly half a mile long. It seemed to Commander
Raffleton that Cousin Christopher had been created and carefully
preserved by Providence for this particular job.

He was no longer the moonstruck youth of the previous night, on whom
phantasy and imagination could play what pranks they chose. That
part of him the keen, fresh morning air had driven back into its
cell. He was Commander Raffleton, an eager and alert young engineer
with all his wits about him. At this point that has to be
remembered. Descending on a lonely reach of shore he proceeded to
again disturb Malvina for the purpose of extracting tins. He
expected his passenger would in broad daylight prove to be a pretty,
childish-looking girl, somewhat dishevelled, with, maybe, a tinge of
blue about the nose, the natural result of a three-hours' flight at
fifty miles an hour. It was with a startling return of his original
sensations when first she had come to life beneath his kiss that he
halted a few feet away and stared at her. The night was gone, and
the silence. She stood there facing the sunlight, clad in a
Burberry overcoat half a dozen sizes too large for her. Beyond her
was a row of bathing-machines, and beyond that again a gasometer. A