Dick Mapes shook his head. “That’s different,” he said. “They are boys!”
“Which means that you don’t trust me. You think I’m not a good flyer!”
Dick laughed. “Terry, don’t be silly! I’d trust you to fly anything you could get off the ground. That isn’t it. But I don't feel as if it would be right for me to let you risk your life.”
Terry sat down beside her father’s wheel chair and took his hand. “Listen Dad, while I talk. Haven’t I proven over and over again that I'm a capable flyer. I’m pretty good at getting out of a jam in the air.”
“I’ve said it often, Terry. I’ve never seen a better stunt flyer. You’re clever and you think when you’re in the air! And that’s what half the flyers don’t do. That’s why they crash.”
“All right, so far, so good! We've been in lots of jams and got out of them by using our brains. Weren’t Prim and I The Gypsies Of The Air, and didn’t we go after the boys in Newfoundland and get them away from the kidnappers? Nothing terrible happened to us. Of course old Jim Heron kept us locked up and we had to think hard to find a way out of that old fortress, but we escaped without any harm.” Terry’s eyes were snapping as she recalled their imprisonment in the old fort.
“Oh, I know, Terry. You and Prim can look out for yourselves. But I don’t like to send you into a jam deliberately.”
“But Dad, you don’t know that there will be a jam, this time, and if there is, we can get out of it.”
Dick did not answer as Terry hesitated and gave him a chance. The girl went on:
“Now we’re in one of the biggest jams we’ve ever had yet. We’re almost sure to lose our flying field, though we have the money to take up the option, because our enemy Joe Arnold has written mean letters to old Peter Langley and set him against us. Now you can see for yourself, if I could get down there before the option expires he would think differently.”