“Well, papa, has not a single specimen of your great menagerie arrived yet?” Toker’s only daughter, Gwendoline, a girl of eighteen, overflowing with life, came and laid her hand on her father’s shoulder and laughingly put this question. And when she laughed a whole scherzo of dazzling teeth, sparkling eyes, and mischievous dimples was playing over her piquant little face. “Are you expecting wholly exotic birds this year?” she added.
“Oh, Gwen, how can you be so lacking in reverence?”
Her features suddenly assumed the expression which she herself called her “Sunday singing-book face.”
“Oh, papa, I am penetrated with awesome reverence! Only to think of all these laurel-crowned moonshine occiputs, trumpeted together from every corner of the globe, makes me shiver with respect! And is it not true that this year a ‘Jap’ is coming?”
“A Japanese, yes, daughter. You know I do not permit abbreviations for whole nations. Or do you like it when your father is spoken of as the ‘Yankee’?”
“Dear me, and what do you say when your daughter is called a ‘Gibson Girl,’ or the ‘Dollar Princess’?... Oh, look! there is one flying now and there is another. And there, away down on the horizon,—is not that an airship?”
The balcony on which father and daughter were standing commanded a wide outlook over land and lake. The edifices which Mr. Toker had caused to be erected were situated only a short distance from the shore. The narrow strip of land between the water and the buildings seemed to be covered with a pale-red giant carpet—the whole piece was one single bed of roses. The lake glittered in the sunshine and innumerable sailboats and other craft were moving on its surface. On the distant horizon snow-crowned mountain peaks, and above all a cloudless sky, against the brilliant blue of which were hovering several dark dragon-flies—the air-motors now no longer objects of wonder: no longer objects of wonder, but nevertheless overpoweringly wonderful. Always, when at a greater or less distance such an equipage was seen, men exclaimed just as Gwendoline did: “See, an aeroplane, and there’s another, and yonder is an airship!”
Mr. Toker raised his head and shaded his eyes:—“Yes, my daughter, I see and rejoice! How high they fly! Oh, but man will no longer soar to the heights with impunity....”
“‘With impunity’?... I don’t understand....”
“No, you do not understand. You do not know, as yet, why we are here. I have not informed you what the object is which I am aiming at in my Rose-Week. Perhaps I will tell you some other time—you have seemed to me still too young, too childish. You are such a child still, Gwen,—lucky girl!”