So now we find Dick, Paul and Innis laboring over the new airship, in which the young millionaire hoped to make a flight across the United States, from ocean to ocean.
"That's what I like to see!" exclaimed Uncle Ezra, as he came out to the shed just before he started back for Dankville. "It does young men good to work. Pity more of 'em don't do it. Hard work and plain food is what the rising generation wants. I don't approve of airships—that is as a rule," the crabbed old miser hastily added, "but, of course, twenty thousand dollars is a nice prize to win. I only hope you get it. Nephew Richard. I like to see you work. I'm going back now. I'll tell your Aunt Samantha that you've at last learned how to do something, even if it is only building an airship."
"Don't you call my studies at Kentfield something, Uncle Ezra?" asked Dick.
"No sir! No, sir-ee!" cried the elderly man. "That's time and money thrown away. But I see that you can do manual labor, Nephew Richard, and if you really want to do useful work, and earn money, I'd be glad to have you in my woolen mill. I could start you on three dollars and a half a week, and you could soon earn more. Will you come?"
"No, thank you," said Dick. "Thank you just the same."
He had a vivid idea of what it might mean to work for his Uncle Ezra. Besides, Dick's fortune was such that he did not have to work. But he fully intended to, and he was getting a training that would enable him to work to the best advantage. Just because he was a millionaire he did not despise work. In fact he liked it, and he had made up his mind that he would not be an idler.
Just now aviation attracted him, and he put in as many hours working over his airship—hard work, too,—as many a mechanic might have done.
"Well, I'll say good-bye, Nephew Richard," spoke Uncle Ezra, after walking about the big airship, and looking at it more closely than would seem natural, after he had characterized it as a "foolish piece of business."
"I'm sorry you won't stay until my father gets back," spoke Dick. "I expect him tomorrow, or next day."
"Well, if I stayed I know my hired man would waste a lot of feed on the horses," said Uncle Ezra. "And every time I go away he sits up and burns his kerosene lamp until almost ten o'clock at night. And oil has gone up something terrible of late."