Kitty Clavering gave the young man a withering look, and inquired of the flyers when they might hope for rides. "Oh, I don't mean today," she added, "for I know you must both be nearly dead."
"Not a bit of it!" denied Linda, who still looked as fresh as a flower in her becoming blue and white suit. "But it's supposed to be wise to have a mechanic go over your plane each time you fly. Just a precaution, you see."
"A very good rule to follow," commented Miss Carlton. "Now everybody get into their cars, and we'll go over to our bungalow for some ginger-ale and sandwiches."
"Just a moment, please!" interrupted a voice at her elbow, and everyone turned to see a newspaper man with a camera. "Pictures, please!"
Linda and Ralph smilingly agreed, and their friends stepped aside. Then they all piled into the three machines that were waiting for them; while the strangers who had been watching commented on the beautiful biplane, and the handsome couple who had been flying it, and wondered whether they were married.
"Did you bring my necklace, Ralph?" asked Kitty Clavering, as he got into her roadster with her and Maurice.
"Surest thing!" he replied, as if nothing at all had happened on the way. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the pasteboard box, with the French jeweler's name engraved on the lid.
"Thanks a lot," she replied. "Maurry, you take care of it till we get home, so long as you're sitting in the middle. Mind you don't lose it! I think as much of that as Linda does of her plane."
"But not as much of it as you do of me?" asked the youth, flippantly.
"A thousand times more! Like the old question people always ask married men: 'If your mother and your wife were drowning, which one would you save?' Well, if you and the necklace were drowning, I'd go after my necklace!"