"Well, I reckon I might. It's my machine, and I'm not going to let them aviary fellers monkey too much with it unless I'm on board. They might bust something, and want me to pay for it. Yes, I reckon I'll do some flying myself."
"Ezra Larabee!" cried his horror-stricken wife. "Be you plumb crazy?"
"I hope not, Samantha."
"But goin' up in an airship! Why it's flyin' in the face of Providence!"
"Well, it'll be flying in the air, at the same time," he chuckled. Clearly this was a different Uncle Ezra than his wife had ever known. She sighed.
"The idea!" Aunt Samantha murmured. "Goin' up in an airship. You'll fall and be killed, as sure as fate."
"That's what I was afraid of first," said Uncle Ezra, "and I didn't want to go into the scheme. But this young feller, Lieutenant Larson, he proved to me different. They can't fall. If your engine stops all you got to do is to come down like a feather. He used some funny word, but I can't think of it now. But it's safe—it's safer than farming, he claims. Most any time on a farm a bull may gore you, or a threshing engine blow up. But there's nothing like that in an airship.
"Besides, think of the twenty thousand dollars I'm going to get," he added as a final argument.
"You're not sure of it," objected his wife.
"Oh, yes I be!" he boasted. "Then I'm going into the airship business. Well, now I've told you, I'm going to sleep again."