Mrs. Dalloway

past the bronze heroes, lifted some flag flying in the British breast
of Mr. Bowley and he raised his hat as the car turned into the Mall
and held it high as the car approached; and let the poor mothers of
Pimlico press close to him, and stood very upright. The car came on.

Suddenly Mrs. Coates looked up into the sky. The sound of an aeroplane
bored ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was coming over
the trees, letting out white smoke from behind, which curled and
twisted, actually writing something! making letters in the sky! Every
one looked up.

Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop,
raced, sank, rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out fluttered
behind it a thick ruffled bar of white smoke which curled and wreathed
upon the sky in letters. But what letters? A C was it? an E, then an L?
Only for a moment did they lie still; then they moved and melted and
were rubbed out up in the sky, and the aeroplane shot further away and
again, in a fresh space of sky, began writing a K, an E, a Y perhaps?

“Glaxo,” said Mrs. Coates in a strained, awestricken voice, gazing
straight up, and her baby, lying stiff and white in her arms, gazed