Barbara went back to her sewing in one of the hangars. But she was already a changed person. Flying had changed her life, and she had a feeling it would continue to do so.
The following Sunday while Barbara was sewing again, Olafson came into the hangar where she was working. He told her she could put down her needle and thread and start taking her flying lessons. To her surprise, he would not be her instructor.
"I'm too busy, so one of my young pilots will teach you. Here he comes now."
It was a gray, otherwise depressing day in mid-autumn, but when Barbara saw her flying instructor; tall, handsome, blond and in his early twenties, he seemed bathed in sunlight. The sun was behind the clouds outside the hangar, but still she was almost blinded by its aura around him.
Olafson called to the young man. "Paul, come meet your pupil." Then, to Barbara, "This is a new pilot I recently hired. He's a college boy, crazy about flying, like you are. He wanted a job flying, so I gave him one. You'll be his first pupil."
She could hardly wait.
"Paul, teach her in one of the Pipers, not the old Jenny."
Paul Riordan introduced himself to Barbara with a friendly and firm handshake and a smile that kept the sun shining around him, even in the shadows of the hangar. His boyishly handsome, very open and honest face was suntanned, and he brushed a hand through his wheat-blond hair because some locks of it kept falling over his forehead. He wore gray jodhpur-like flight trousers, shiny black boots, and a plaid shirt under a short brown leather jacket. It was not new but worn, and butter-soft-looking, coming just down to his slim waist.
She almost liked his voice best of all. He spoke in a huskiness with a kind of half-laugh in it that was infectious.
Almost without realizing it, she compared him with Chet Armstrong. She gave her new flight instructor the prize cup not only for masculine good looks that were unthreatening, but also for politeness.
After only a few minutes, Barbara realized something about Paul Riordan she had almost given up hope of seeing in a man. He was, she decided, a gentleman. She could tell that he liked girls, but did not flirt with her. Almost immediately upon seeing him, she kind of wished he would.
They both strapped on parachutes in the hangar, then walked out to the flying field and stood in front of a small, yellow-colored, fabric-covered, single-winged Piper Cub.