"But you don't say all that when you see him. You don't say 'Good morning, father Jack, the Giant Killer.'"
"O' course I don't," said Jack with displeased dignity, "but this is a story about the giants father fights. He really fights giants."
Eva's eyes rounded in alarm. "Does he k-kill them like your story says?"
"No, he catches 'em and makes 'em do what he wants. What do you think he's catching now?"
"Goannas," said Eva quickly, whose special terror were the large lizards called iguanas which occasionally invaded the garden, or that she and Jack found about the farm and which Jack drove away with adorable courage.
Jack gave a contemptuous laugh. "What silly things girls are! This is a true story I'm telling you. Father catches the air, at least he rides up in it in a thing called an airy-plane, and he makes the air help to carry him along."
It was neither a very lucid nor accurate description of his father's methods, but it filled his hearer with awe and wonder.
"Not really!"
"But yes," reiterated Jack, "and when I'm old enough, I'll ride in an airy-plane too. Come along; I've told you plenty of stories for to-day. Let's come and play airy-planes," so round and round the paddock scampered the children, with arms outspread like wings, arms which flapped occasionally as the speed became greater to the accompaniment of a whirring sound intended feebly to imitate the buzz of a motor bicycle.
"Faster, faster," cried Jack breathlessly. "Airy-planes flies at an awful rate," but Eva's fat legs were failing her and her arms fell to her side with a little gasp like the wheeze of exhausted bellows.