“Why, there’s no such thing,” said Wendell vexedly. “An aeroplane traveling underground! How silly! An aeroplane doesn’t travel underground. How can it?”
“Don’t ask me,” shrugged the Pixie. “How should I know? You can’t expect me to make up the tasks and think up the answers too. Be reasonable.” And he vanished.
Wendell was greatly cast down.
“It’s a fool task,” he said as he went to bed. “In fact, it’s impossible.”
He woke with a sense of calamity hanging over him. Really, it was almost as bad as having fractions on his mind. He was so serious at breakfast that Cousin Virginia asked him if he was practicing to be a Puritan Ancestor at a fancy-dress ball. This levity seemed to Wendell ill-timed.
The brooding anxiety lingered with him all through school time. What if he couldn’t do the task? What would it be like to belong to a Pixie? He didn’t like the prospect.
He came out of his school on Beacon Street, still with the cloud lowering over him. He felt desperate. He thought of going over to the train yards of South Station and stealing a ride in an empty cattle-car bound for the prairies of the West. He meditated stowing away on a ship bound for Timbuctoo or Guam or somewhere. Just then a tempting truck passed him “south”-bound on Beacon Street. It was low and it was going slowly, and altogether it offered just the right opportunity to “hook” a ride. Wendell seized the opportunity and the truck together; and dodged down inside unseen by the driver.
In Allston, Wendell dropped out again. His mind was somewhat relieved by this pleasant adventure, and he didn’t wish to get too far from home. He hailed an electric for Park Street.
Now, you may not believe it, but the first thing he saw when he got on the car was an aeroplane—a toy aeroplane about four feet long, carried in the arms of a freckle-faced boy.
Wendell sat down by the boy.