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.