After dinner they motored out to the field where the exhibition was to be given. A coatless, tanned, weather-beaten crowd had already gathered.
Pen stood apart from the spectators, watching Larry whirl, turn turtle, and perform all the aviation agonies so fascinating to the untutored. When he shut off the engine and swung down, skimming the ground for a way and stopping gently, she was in waiting nearby.
“I loathe this kind of exhibition work!” he declared. “It’s silly stuff, but it’s what the public wants. Sure you don’t want to try a little straight flight?” he tempted.
“N—o, Larry. Vice versa for mine, as the Irishman said.”
“All right. Here, Meder!” he said to the mechanic, who had come up. “Take care of the flier. I’ll see you later at the hotel.”
“It was wonderful, Larry,” said Pen as they were motoring to town. “I seem to see you from such a new angle now. I have always thought of you as a lovable, happy-go-lucky boy, but when I saw you take the air, I knew you had come to be something far different. You have the hawk-sense of balance, the sixth sense—the sense woman was supposed to have a monopoly of till the day of aeroplanes arrived. You had nerve to go up there and yet you were not nervous.”
“A fellow has to be without nerve and yet nervy,” explained Larry. “If he loses his sense of equilibrium up there, it’s all off; yet he has to be always ready to take a chance and to find one.”
“And, Larry—when you fly to the colors—”
“To the tricolors,” he interrupted.
“It will bring out the biggest and bravest and best there is in you, Larry. I am so glad! Don’t go out of my life again. Let me hear from you when you get over.”