“Oh, say!  I got a letter he left for your father,” Curley broke in.  “I’ll git it and you can take it up to the house.”  He gave Mary V a mysterious look and went into the room where he slept.

Mary V followed him as far as the door, and saw Curley take two letters from under his pillow.  Her heart gave a jump at that, and it began to beat very fast when he turned and put them into her hand with another mysterious look.  She thanked him and hurried out on the porch and straight to her pet ledge.  Her dad’s letter could wait.

On the ledge she sat down, and with fingers that shook she tore open, an envelope addressed to “Miss Mary V. Selmer, care of Curley.”  It had been sealed very tightly, as though it contained secrets.  Which it did.

Mary V read that letter through from beginning to end five times before she left the ledge.  It was not exactly a love letter, either, though Mary V squeezed it between her palms and then kissed it before she put it away out of sight.  After that she cried lonesomely and stared away into that part of the sky where Johnny and his airplane had last been a disappearing speck.

  “Dear Mary V,” (Johnny had written) “I’m not going to tell anybody
  good-bye.  Not even you, or I might say especially not you.  It’s hard
  enough to go as it is.

“Maybe you won’t care much, but I am a hopeful cuss, and I’m going to build air castles about you till I come back, which I hope to do when I have made good.  I made an awful mess of things here, and it’s up to me to make good now before I say anything to you about air castles and so on.

“I told you once that they need flyers in France, and that’s where I’m going if they will have me.  I’ve got to fly and that’s all there is to it, and I can’t fly and be a stock hand at one and the same time because the two don’t go together worth a cent, and I have sure found that out, and so has your dad, I guess.

“Well, I can’t ask you to wait till I have made good, because that wouldn’t be square, but I can say that when I have made good I am coming back, and then if some other fellow has got the start of me he will sure have to go some to keep his start.  Because I am going to have you some day, if I have anything to say about it.  I’ll teach you to fly, and we will sure part the clouds like foam and all the rest of it.  You’ve got more nerve than any other girl I ever saw, and, anyway, I’d like you just the same if you was a coward, because I couldn’t help it no matter what you was, just so you were Mary V.

“So good-bye, and look for me back with my chest all dolled up with medals, because I am sure coming if you will let me.  When I get to Tucson, I’ll call you up on long distance, and then if your folks ain’t in the room, I wish you’d tell me if it’s all right with you, my loving you the way I do.  Or if they are in the room, you can just say ’all