"I can just try it, you know," said Kaboff. "I can't guarantee to get away with it."
"As much again if you do, you know," said Owen as he started briskly away with Hicks.
The place that Panatella had chosen for the start of his balloon ascension was a field upon the crest of the Palisades above the amusement park.
Panatella had brought with him from abroad a reputation for dare-devil adventures in the air. And he had proved his reckless courage in the several brief ascensions that he had already made on this side.
Today, with his promise of the longest parachute drop on record, people flocked to the field from New York and all adjacent New Jersey.
"I wish you wouldn't always invite that velvet-pawed servant on our trips," grumbled Harry to Pauline, as Owen went for his dustcoat.
"Owen is my trustee and guardian. You have no right to speak of him as a servant. Besides, when he's along he keeps you from being silly."
Harry stamped out to the garage, swung a new touring car around to the door, and soon, with Owen and Pauline, was speeding for the ferry.
Signor Panatella was superintending the filling of the great gas bag. He was a tall, lithe man in pink tights beneath which his muscles bulged angularly like the gas filling the balloon bag.
A Latin rapidity of speech and motion added to the pink tights made him comically frog-like, and even the abattis of medals on his breast could not save his dignity.