“I hadn’t heard of that,” remarked Mr. Saxton in a thoughtful, speculative way. “Something to it, is there?”
“I think so.”
“Worth specializing as a department?”
“You would have to decide that, Mr. Saxton,” replied Mr. Hardy. “I couldn’t venture an opinion.”
“You appear to think enough of it to give your time to experimenting, it seems,” said the manufacturer. “I don’t want to get behind in the procession, you know. If we could work into the airship business in our dull months, it might become quite a profitable feature of the business.”
Mr. Saxton went all around the framework on the wooden horses, and inspected every part of the skeleton machine. He asked many questions. Especially was he interested, when Mr. Hardy with the natural eloquence of an inventor explained some new features of the Dart.
Then the manufacturer strolled to one side in a thoughtful way. He took out a pencil and a card and did some figuring.
“See here, Hardy,” he said at length, “I’ve decided to give this airship business a try. We’ll just move this model down to the plant where we’ll have everything handy, and you can put in a week or two seeing how the proposition pans out.”
CHAPTER XII
A SERIOUS CHARGE