Then, before actual labor began, Captain Anderson suggested that they go into the house for a few moments. Andy chuckled. He knew that the captain wanted to acquaint his suspicious wife with the turn in affairs—possibly the captain was afraid that Mrs. Osborne might make a real attack with her skillet.
Andy could not but envy the young aviator’s natty figure and the professional look about him. It was with considerable pride that he presented Osborne to Mrs. Anderson and his mother.
“Maybe you don’t know about him,” began Andy while Roy protested and grew red in the face, “but there isn’t anyone in America, young or old, who knows any more about flyin’ machines than he does. There’s a book about him, and he ain’t but—how old are you?” exclaimed the boy.
“Oh, I can’t vote yet,” laughed Roy. “This is certainly a beautiful place for a home, Mrs. Anderson.”
“And that book tells how he figured out an aeroplane express in the deserts of Utah and found a lost tribe of Indians—”
“But I can’t see that anything I did was half as remarkable as the making of a complete aeroplane down here,” broke in Roy.
“I never saw a regular flying machine,” said Mrs. Anderson, “but this one doesn’t look like one to me. Do you think it is all right?”
“No aeroplane is absolutely all right,” answered Roy smiling. “But this one out there is correct so far as I understand aeroplanes. Anyway, I’m going to test this one out, and I don’t expect to kill myself doing it.”
“How far can you go in it?” asked Mrs. Leighton.
“If it works all right, I could go easily from here to Lake Worth, or back over the Everglades, or even across to the Bahamas—”