Dick hugged her to him. “You’ve got a great life ahead of you, little daughter,” he said. “That’s right, you are a chip off the old block. You’re like your Dad, you’re a born flyer.” And from that time on, Terry played in Dick’s big airplane whenever her father could spare the time necessary to watch her play.
Prim was her mother’s girl, more home-loving, and not nearly so full of spirit.
“We’ll make a flyer of her, too,” declared Dick, not wanting to be partial. “But I doubt if she’ll take to it the way Terry does. I think Terry has a talent for flying.”
Alice laughed heartily at this joke, for how could Dick tell at that age whether Terry would be able to fly a plane or not?
But Dick was right. As the girls grew older, Terry took to flying as a duck takes to the water, but with Prim it was always hard work and while she had done the necessary solo flying to entitle her to a pilot’s license, Dick was never quite sure of her. She did not love flying as Terry did. She had an indifference to things that frightened him.
But to Terry it was the breath of life. She had the air sense which her twin sister lacked.
At sixteen Terry not only was an expert flyer but was a good mechanic as well. And in the venture of the flying field, Dick called her his “right hand man” and declared that she could do more work and understood more about planes than Bud Hyslop, his helper.
Allan Graham and Syd Ames had been Dick’s first student flyers. And for that reason he felt as if they belonged to him. Syd was an orphan, the son of a flying buddy of Dick’s, and the boy spent most of his time in the Mapes household.
Allan was the son of a wealthy business man and the boy had persuaded his father to back Dick financially. Bennett Graham only half believed in the plan. He didn’t like flying and he wished with all his heart that Allan would choose some other profession. He even blamed Dick Mapes for encouraging the boy to continue against his will.
However Allan, this sturdy, broad shouldered youth, usually got his own way. And what he wanted now from his father was a partnership in the Dick Mapes Flying Field.