Having learned that you are perfecting an apparatus that will reach any height–even go as far as the moon–and that it will be capable of carrying a passenger, I should like to volunteer for the trip.
I have always wanted to say ‘Hullo!’ to the Man in the Moon, on whose face I have often looked from an aëroplane already; and I am ready to try anything once–even if it should be once for all!
Yours for the big chance,
T. S.
P. S. I respectfully apologize for not being able just at present to give my full name, but will, with your permission, furnish it later.”
“Humph! Mr. T. S.! ‘With your permission,’ where do you write from?” Pemrose bent low over the primrose sheet. “Oh! from Lightwood. Now,–now where is that, Daddy?”
“There’s a little, one-horse village of the name among the Berkshire Mountains, not far from fashionable Lenox.” Her father smiled.
“Lenox! How lovely! Why! that’s where you and I are going to stay–stay for a week or two–isn’t it, father, en route for Greylock and the experiments. You know the Grosvenors have invited us–and they have a wonderful old place up there. Una’s mother is carrying coals these days–” Pemrose winked–“coals of penitence in her heart for ever having sneered at your invention, Daddy.”
“Hot ones, are they? Well! I wish she’d hasten and spill them out before she reaches Lenox.” The inventor chuckled. “Let me see, she was born there, I believe, at their mountain home–yes, and one or other of her brothers, too.”
“Ho! Was it–was it the unicorn; I–I mean the oddity; the Thunder Bird’s rival for all-l that money?” The girlish hand shook now as it wielded the coffee-pot. “Oh, dear! wouldn’t his horn be exalted if he never came back?” With a droll little catch of the breath. “Una and I are as friendly as ever now, Dad,” ran on the girlish voice, hurriedly leading off from the neighborhood of the will. “And she’s to be taken out of school early, when we go, because she has been so nervous since the train-wreck. So chummy we are–oh, as chummy as in the old days when we measured eyelashes and she laughed at my ‘chowchow’ name!” The speaker here shot the bluest of glances through those twinkling lashes at their reflection in a neighboring teapot, older than Columbia herself.