“Try and keep me out!” she replied. “I just can’t wait. I don’t even care about lunch, if you’ll just give me time to get into my flying suit——”
“What’s this? What’s this?” demanded Miss Emily Carlton, entering the living room with Amy at her heels. “You’re not going to go without your lunch, Linda!”
“Then may we have ours right away?” pleaded her niece. “Ralph and I, I mean?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Only do be careful, Linda, with a new plane. Are you quite sure all the parts are there?”
Ralph smiled.
“The autogiro couldn’t have arrived safely, Miss Carlton, if it hadn’t been perfect. You see they don’t deliver planes in trucks—they fly ’em!”
“All right, then,” agreed the older woman, grudgingly. “Then I’ll go and see about lunch.”
It was a thrilling afternoon for Linda, and even more pleasant for Ralph, in the possession of his first flying machine. Together they went over to the airport and took the new autogiro into the skies, first with Linda, then with Ralph at the controls. In the joy of flying Linda forgot for the time being all about the queer experience of the preceding day with Lord Dudley. She was Linda Carlton the aviatrix to-day, interested in nothing but aviation.
She even forgot about Amy until she returned to the bungalow at supper-time, and found the little girl waiting wistfully on the porch all alone. Linda knew from her expression that no one had telephoned.
“Nobody cares about me except the newspaper reporters,” she remarked the following day—the Friday before the treasure hunt—when still nothing had happened, and no one had come to claim her. “And even they are beginning to lose interest.”