At one side of the aviation fields ran a low line of sheds for motors where men driving out from the city could lock and leave the cars they had come in while they were aloft in the airplanes or dirigibles, though dirigibles were but little used, on account of their size and expense. Even the small racing dirigibles like Mr. Ridgeway’s pair, and the one Van Arsdale had owned, were not common. It was like approaching in a state chariot, Lawrence found, and he commenced to understand that the use of the big balloon had been partly to impress the Moranians and the republic.
At least twenty slim, graceful planes were flying here and there as they commenced to descend to the field, and quite a flock of them, bright and saucy, flitted round them as they went down. In the distance, they could see brightly clad little figures trotting around the golf course, and nearer, on the tennis courts, groups of what looked like dancing dolls hopped and pranced over the smooth surfaces.
“Makes me homesick to see all those planes,” said Bill.
“Awful poor pilots, most of ’em!” Hank replied, watching a monoplane go jerking around just above the ground. “Look at that! Oh, lordy! Well, he did miss the Club House, didn’t he? But I bet the mortar is peeling out from them stones from fright. Must be a kid at the wheel. No, by gummy, see the old duck steerin’?”
And as the plane careened near them, Hank leaned out and flung hot words of scorn and advice after the uncertain holder of the wheel.
“Poor old dear!” said Hank. “Don’t you suppose he ain’t got no folks? He ought to have some grandchildren or somebody that loves him, that ought to keep him with his feet on the ground where he belongs. There he goes again! See the leaves he clipped out of that oak tree. Well, I can’t look! I just can’t watch and see him destroyed.”
“He’s going down,” said Bill, looking after the careening plane. “He does lay a queer course.”
“Queer course!” exclaimed Bill. “If it was so you could run a trail behind him, it would look like a ball of rickrack braid after a kitten had played with it.”
After the dirigible had been secured, the party started over to the Club House where Mr. Ridgeway hoped to get a motor. Bill and Hank sauntered along in the rear.
“There’s that precious old Methuselah that was reelin’ around in the plane,” said Hank suddenly. “I got a mind to go tell him what I think.”