"No. To become a real flyer, you must understand aerial navigation and pass off formation flying and night flying. It sounds like a lot--but it really isn't so difficult. Of course, if you don't want to go the whole way--"
"Oh, but I do, Bill," she said earnestly. "It's only that I never dreamed there was so much to be learned. It kind of takes my breath away--"
"You mustn't let that bother you. I'm glad you're going to do the thing up right, though. It will take a lot of your time--but you'll find it worth your while. Let's get busy now. We'll start on signals. Then later this afternoon you can go up again if you feel like it."
For the next two weeks Dorothy worked daily with Bill. By the end of that time she had completed her elementary solo flying and was now engrossed in mastering the difficulties of reverse control.
Bill realized after giving her two or three lessons, that his pupil showed a high degree of aptitude for flying. Their trip home in the amphibian after the wreck of the Scud, had proved pretty conclusively to him that this sixteen-year-old girl had an unusually cool and stable temperament. Ordinarily, flight training is inadvisable for anyone under eighteen years of age, and Bill knew that twenty years is preferable. For, ordinarily, the instinctive coordination between sensory organs and muscles, which is necessary toward the control of a plane in the air, does not develop earlier. An airplane must be kept moving or it will fall; and the processes of reason are far too slow to keep up with the exigencies of flight. Flying cannot be figured out like a problem in mathematics. Calculation won't do the trick--there isn't enough time for it.
Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Bill Bolton was one himself, and Dorothy, he knew, was another.
When Mr. Dixon questioned him as to Dorothy's progress, he gave him a list of the maneuvers that had already been mastered, and the approximate length of time she had taken to satisfy him in performance.
"But that doesn't mean a thing to me--" objected the older man. "Look here--I was talking to a friend of mine who is an old Royal Flying Corps man. He said that Dorothy should wait several years before training. How about it? I know your reputation as a flyer, and I've proved my confidence in you by trusting you with my daughter's life. Why is it better for her to start now, rather than later?"
"Do you play the violin, sir?"
"No ear for music." Mr. Dixon shook his head in reminiscence. "My father played well. It was his ambition that we play duets together. But after wasting money for two years on lessons for me, he gave it up. My! the sounds I made when I practiced! It must have been torture to him. I can't tell one note from another--but I remember how awful it was. But what has that got to do with Dorothy's flying?"