“But is there any real danger of an accident? I wouldn’t care so much if I had my new-fangled parachute with me, and could only get outside; for even if the old car did drop, I’d be able to sail down like a feather.”
“Danger—of course not a bit,” Rob told him sternly. “You don’t suppose the managers of this big Exposition would allow a mechanical affair like this Aëroscope to be run day after day unless the owners had made it absolutely accident proof. Just hold your horses and we’ll soon be moving again.”
“Yes, and Hiram,” said Andy just then, “don’t put yourself on a par with those silly screeching girls over there, who are hugging each other so. Poor things, they don’t know any better! But you’re a scout, Hiram, and have been taught never to show the white feather. Brace up! You’re wearing khaki right now, and for the sake of the cloth show yourself a man!”
That brought Hiram to a realization of the fact that he was indeed hardly proving himself a worthy scout. He pretended to be indifferent.
“Shucks! who cares?” he exclaimed. “I do wish them girls’d let up on their racket; it gets on a feller’s nerves to hear ’em shriek that way.”
“Well, I know what ails the old thing!” suddenly announced Andy, with a grin on his face that told how his love for joking exceeded any faint feeling of alarm that may have seized upon him.
“Let’s hear it, then!” demanded Rob.
“Oh, if you had only guessed it before we started it would have saved lots of bother!” called out Hiram.
“They miscalculated the weight, you see!” continued Andy. “Some fellows are so deceptive in their looks. Now right across from us there’s a fat boy with his back turned this way, and staring hard out of the window. I bet you they figured wrong on him, and that’s why we’ve got stuck up here four-fifths of the way to the top.”
The other two now looked, and owing to some of the passengers in the car crowding together an opening was made like a little lane. At the end of this they discovered, just as Andy had said, an exceedingly fat boy occupying more than his share of space, with his chubby legs braced under him, and his face pressed against the heavy wire netting that covered the open windows.