"I think, Bill, that you will have no trouble in learning to control a machine when your mother feels like releasing you from your promise. I knew of a fellow once who made a long and successful flight with no preparation at all other than what he had learned from books and observation."
"I don't believe I would want to try anything like that," laughed Bill, "but I am stowing away all I can gather here and there."
"The thing for you to do," said Ernest, "is to roll around the fields every chance you get. I will be glad to take you with me any day or every day that you feel like going. Of course you won't have very much time after to-day except on Saturdays. To-morrow classes will be in full swing. Get in now and take my seat."
Ernest tucked his screwdriver deep in his pocket, pulled his goggles over his eyes and, seating himself behind Bill, directed his actions. A thrilling two hours followed for Bill.
When at last they returned to the vicinity of the hangar from which they had started, they found an excited and angry group around Horace Jardin's aeroplane. Something was wrong with it and the two mechanics working over it were unable to find out why the machine refused to fly. It refused, indeed, to rise from the ground and the engine worked with a peculiar jolt. The sound of the bugle from the high ground in front of the mess hall called them to lunch and they went off, leaving the men still at work. Horace was in a very bad humor, and as usual indulged himself in a number of foolish threats, the least of which was to scrap the whole machine.
"I will do it sure as shooting!" he blustered. "If that machine isn't going to come up to the maker's guarantee, I will make my dad get me one that will. I won't tinker round with any one-horse bunch of junk like this looks to be."
"Give it a chance," suggested Bill soothingly.
"Not a darned chance!" declared Jardin. "I tell you my father promised me an aeroplane, and he has got to come across with a good machine! He will do it, too. He's too stuck on me to risk my being hurt. And he knows it is not my fault. I can fly all right."
"Don't junk it, anyhow," said Frank anxiously.
"Want to buy it?" asked Bill.