“Want to fly to Paris with me?” suggested Linda, playfully.
“Sometime. But in a bigger boat than the ‘Ladybug.’ Now if you still had the Bellanca——”
“If I had, I wouldn’t go,” interrupted Linda calmly, reaching for another sandwich. “I wouldn’t do a thing that would get me into the newspapers!”
“I don’t blame you,” agreed her companion.
Little did they think as they spoke thus idly, that that very evening they themselves would be requesting the papers to print a story which concerned them.
It all happened two hours later, with incredible swiftness. They were flying back across Wisconsin, low enough to watch the landscape, when Dot suddenly let out a shriek of horror.
“Look at that—oh—Linda!”
Her companion grasped the joy stick, and looked about expectantly, as if some plane must be coming at her which she did not see.
“No—down on the road!” cried Dot. “That car!”
Casting her glance downward, Linda saw what she meant. A huge car, driven by a man with a great mass of gray hair and a gray beard, at a speed nearing eighty miles an hour, zigzagged wildly in the road, rushing headlong at the forlorn figure of a girl walking beside the gutter.