CHAPTER XXVI
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
Nevertheless, the flying-machine episode played its part in the history of the Star. Facts are like that. We refuse quite disdainfully to recognize them, even crying "Fudge!" and "Nonsense!" and decline to put them in the Star, or the Sun, or the World, or even in the sober Journal of the Society for the Enlargement of Human Heads, but they don't mind. They circle around us, with the sunshine flashing on their wings, and all the simple and credulous people gaping up at them, and they don't in the least care for our excellent platforms, constitutions, and Bibles.
It was the flying-machine incident which was the immediate cause of the return of Norton Carr. It was foreordained and likewise predestined that he should return, but there had to be some proximate event. And what better than a wandering flying-machine?
It was on a Sunday in May, such a perfect still morning as seems to come only at that moment of the spring, and upon Sunday. I was sitting here at my desk at the open window, busily writing. I could feel the warm, sweet air of spring blowing in, I could hear the pleasant, subdued noises from the barnyard, and by leaning just a little back I could see the hens lazily fluffing their feathers in the sunny doorway of the barn. I love such mornings.
The tender new shoots of the Virginia creeper were uncurling themselves at the window ledge and feeling their way upward toward freedom—and Nort put his head in among them.
"Hello, David!"
Though I had just been thinking of him, the sound of his voice startled me. I looked around and saw him smiling very much in his old way.
"Nort, you rascal!" said I.