"You bet it is!" he answered heartily.
"Lots better than the stars!" she murmured.
He pressed her fingers.
"I didn't let on," he confessed; "but I was scared to death."
"And so was I," she acknowledged. "I never want to leave the earth again!"
They stood there silent for several minutes.
"But it is jolly!" she said unexpectedly, in a tiny voice. "You know—I might take just a little trip again—if you asked me!"
They passed high over Philadelphia and Baltimore and, just as the sun sank blazing among the tumbled cloud castles in the west, caught sight of the Washington Monument—a flashing spire—and then the Capitol, its dome burning golden in the afterglow. The silver Potomac wound toward the city, as it rose toward them. The avenues and boulevards gleamed amid the soft verdure of trees and shrubbery.
And, as they settled earthward, from a parade-ground came faintly upward the call of a bugle—like a jewel in the dusk.
Rhoda waved her hand toward the smiling earth below.