The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

I lly
226 THE FOOT OF TIME
germinate, lastingly. Presently she got up, turned
impulsively to her old friend:
"Oh! you most sweetest old thing!" she said.
"How I do simply adore you!"
"Stuff and nonsense, child! There." Florence
gave the girl a peck by way of a kiss on the tip of
her shapely nose, then a sample of the real thing on
the proper place to follow it.
"Run along, child," she said. "I know you have
to get back. Your old Aunt thought you would
like to know."
Edith's career at the University had terminated;
she had graduated by the very skin of her teeth,
and her studies were supposed to be over. They
would have been over but for her passion for flying.
Her father's allowance, aided by gifts from
her Aunt, enabled her to study both sides of aviation—the
practical and theoretical. Edith Burne
obtained her pilot's certificate about the time Florence
was journeying back from Tuamonti with her
captive. Edith was said to possess "hands," possibly
partly acquired through a lifetime experience of
riding in her parents' farm life out at Orange beyond
the Blue Mountains. The joy-stick responded to
her lightest touch, her only difficulty being with
the engine, with which she had no ability. Here her
study came in, and the girl would spend long hours
—tedious hours—trying, without much success,
to master the intricacies of aero engines in general.
After leaving her Aunt at Manly, Edith crossed
over to Circular Quay and thence took tram to
Mascot Aerodrome. A great independence of spirit
THE FOOT OF TIME 227
was upon her. The tidings from Florence gave her
the feeling that she was in a strong position. It left
her free—freer than she otherwise could ever have
been—to do as she pleased. Bruce still wanted to
marry her. She didn't want to marry him, but disliked
the restriction involved by the appalling complications
left behind from his sojourn in the South
Seas. Now she was free. Of course her father had
to be reckoned with, and it presented a most formidable
obstacle, but perhaps not an insurmountable
one. It would, she felt, be awful to marry
Bruce without her parents' consent—to run away
with him. She didn't think she could ever be
brought to do it. Still, her father could be fought.
At least, she thought he could, for youth is ever
confident. Quite definitely William Burne could
not be fought. He would let his beloved girl (and,
as has been said, the man's first passion was his one
child) —he would see her die of grief before he
would give way. It touched his religious beliefs,
and that was the insurmountable bigoted barrier.
But Edith Burne, with much of her father's
strength, came away from Manly in a stronger
mood than she had ever before known. Had Bruce
approached her then, had he so much as met her
accidentally in the streets of the city, his reception
would have been colder than at any time in his
experience of the girl he loved. Psychological
effect of this last happening was very marked upon
Burne. frSohe could
Edith help from others . now earn her own living
Edith Burne loved Bruce, but since his return