“No, fish-tail breezes--flapping gusts--that blow you about up there--a lively relish for your rations!”
Here the older aviator glanced sidewise at Sara, as one who has neatly weathered a downthrow current of curiosity.
“Humph! Silent as a fish! Questions taboo! They’ll tell you nothing, these air-scouts--nothing that you’d really like to find out about,” murmured the inquisitive one, teasing the fire-logs with a birch-stick until they matched her own tantalized flame.
“Well!... Well! I’m glad you’re not missing Ground-School dinners now,” she vouchsafed aloud. “When you’ve finished rhyming over the rolls, oh! won’t you--please--tell us something about flying, about your parade-ground, up there?”
“You--you tell ’em, Big Boy!” The observer nudged the younger aviator.
“Well! what shall it be? We sky-skimmers can do about everything with our wings that the birds do with theirs, you know, except flap them. Along some lines we could teach our feathered friends a few tricks!” The younger man laughed over his loyalty cake, less most of the usual ingredients, plus spices and skill. “How about emulating the somersault of a tumble-pigeon--looping the loop--or racing an express train across endless prairies, and, when you caught up with it, flying low, bumping your wheels on the cab of the locomotive, to let the engineer know he wasn’t ‘in it,’ eh?”
“Bravo! What fun! And the engineer, how would he take it?”
“Why, he’d come out and wave his arms, to ‘shoo’ us off, while the passengers flourished hats and handkerchiefs from the train-windows. Ye bats and flying cats! but this honey is good. Did you hive it yourselves as well as grow the peas?”
“No, one of the girls had it sent to her by an uncle who has a bee-farm in Vermont. Well!... Well! We’re waiting to hear more from the latest flying cat--flying man, rather.”
“Great cats! you are, eh?” Tailspin Ned laughed through the firelight. “Ha! What about the thrills we gave civilians--those ‘gawkers of the clouds’--on one public holiday, when our field was thrown open to the public? Thrill after thrill, joke after joke, put over on them!... But, oh, I say, this is awfully one-sided. Those quite too fetching ‘togs,’--pardon me, those very picturesque dresses, head-bands, moccasins, and so forth--they signify something--some ceremony. Now! won’t you let us come in on it?”