“It has been his playground,” explained the boy’s father. “He’d rather be alongside my bench than idling away his time. He knows the car and engine all right.”
Passing out of the shop, the men came into the experimenting ground—an enclosed space of perhaps twenty acres. Beneath a shed at the far end of the factory building a half dozen men were standing idly about the delicate and graceful frame of an aeroplane—the “American Aeroplane Model No. 2.” In their midst, stood a light-haired, gray-eyed boy of compact, muscular build and a countenance a little too old, perhaps, for his years.
“Good morning, Roy,” exclaimed Mr. Atkinson. “Your father says you want to turn aviator.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the boy, doffing an absurd little school hat, “I’m looking for the job.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” asked the manager, smiling, however, as he asked it.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” answered the boy. “I’m only wondering if the new pitch is right.”
Mr. Atkinson seemed about to say something, but paused. Finally he remarked:
“All right. But don’t take chances. Make a low flight.”
The attendants at once shouldered the car and carried it out into the open. Roy pulled his little school cap well down on his head, and climbed aboard. Mr. Osborne, who had disappeared for a moment, now returned with a ball of twine. Quickly unrolling about fifty feet of it, he tied an end of the cord to the aeroplane frame. At the other end of the string, he tied his handkerchief.