“You handled that plane like Lindbergh!” shouted Pat. “Good boy.”
But all that Hal said was, “I’m never going up again.”
Pat had gone over to the plane to look it over. “It seems all right,” he said, turning off the motor that he had tested. “But there must have been a bit of dirt in the line leading from the gas tank. You had a lucky escape, lad. It was quick thinking that you did up there. I’m proud of you.”
But Captain Bill saw that Hal was in no mood for praise. He knew, too, that the best cure for the boy was to take him right up again into the air, so that he would have no time to develop a phobia against going up. But he would not risk taking up the Marianne until it had had a thorough overhauling.
The Captain put his arm around Hal’s shoulder. “You mustn’t say that you’re never going up again, Hal, old man,” he said. “You proved yourself up there. You’re going to make a great flyer.”
“It was great, Hal, great,” said Bob. “I would have crashed the old bus and killed myself. I couldn’t have kept my head.”
Hal said nothing except that he wanted to go home. Pat stayed behind with the plane while the other three went over to the parking lot to get their machine. “Don’t say anything to my mother, whatever you do,” said Hal. “I don’t want her to worry. After all, nothing really happened to me, and why should she be frightened for nothing?”
Bob and the Captain promised to say nothing. In fact, they spoke very little on the way home. Hal was worn out emotionally and the others were occupied with their own thoughts.
The Captain was worried by the new turn that affairs had taken. He was disappointed that all the progress that had been made in Hal’s education had been ruined on the first solo flight. It would have been all right if he had been able to take Hal into the air again, but he couldn’t. Tomorrow they would be too busy with their preparations to do any flying, and the day after that, they would start for the Adirondacks, leaving Hal behind. Without his friends, and with the memory of his terror fresh in his mind, Hal would fall back into his old fears, and be actually worse off than ever. The time to cure Hal was at once, if at all.
Captain Bill had an idea. He thought about it rather carefully most of the way home, and when they were almost home, he broached his plan. “Say, Hal, how about coming over tonight—with your mother? I’m going to tell my story after dinner, tonight, and I thought maybe she’d like to hear it.”