A flash from those prankful days, erratic as a shooting star, shot the glaze in the sufferer’s eye.
“And, then–and then, I really am interested in everything connected with the conquest of the air–of space–myself,” the hampered speaker went on. “I’ve done a little flying, out West,–my son, too! I found out when the experiments with your father’s in-vention–”
“We call it the Thunder Bird,” put in Una, as pain again called for a break.
“Ha! Good name for it! Piles up the moon-going romance, eh? Well-ll,” wearily, “having found out the par-ti-cu-lar night on which the lit-tle model rocket was to fly, I came up the mountain to a small camp that my son and I have ne-ar the summit–east side of Greylock. I was standing on the edge of the spruce woods, watching the whole performance. Then–then, when the parachute dragging the little recording apparatus blew towards me in the darkness, almost into my hand, I–why! I snatched it up and ran with it. Why? Oh, because I suppose the boy has never died in me: the boy that’s ‘part pirate, part pig!’” with a grating chuckle.
Incredible as it seemed, the low laughter, the treacherous tinkle, was echoed by girlish lips as that renascent urchin momentarily swaggered in the glaze of the suffering eye!
“And then–and then something told me–an aberration, I suppose, as my impulses usually are–that I had some sort of r-right to see the very first record man had ever got of that upper air, of Space, if–if I was go-ing to turn over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, for the pursuit of the–sov-er-eign invention.”
“I–I can’t believe it,” murmured Pem into the stony teeth of the Man Killer.
“I meant to return the record next morning, but I was a-fraid your father might shoot me,” to Pemrose. “Then, later, I heard he had gone down the mountain–that was yesterday and a mistake–I went-down, too, to beard him. A–a little more water, please! I could not climb again until to-day; I took the Man Killer trail, as being the shortest. And–here I am!” grimly.
“Incidentally, I gave our family lawyer a shock, little niece,” he went on, as Una, plucking up courage, adjusted her sweater under his head; she began to like this uncle with the pebble-like cast in his stone-gray eye, she began to think that girls–Camp Fire Girls, especially, with their love of the fanciful–might have more patience with him than others had had.
“Yes! you bet I gave old Cartwright the staggers!” He laughed down the twinge of agony in his voice. “Called him up on the long distance telephone, told him I was Treffrey Graham back; that I had been in the East nearly six months, with my son; that I came pretty near disclosing myself on the–on the day when the third installment of my brother’s will was read–actually walked up to the door of my sister’s house, then shied off, because ... Oh, gosh! this knee.”