He carried the bruises he received on that occasion for quite some time; but no one could bear malice against Tubby, who, scrambling to his knees, had immediately expressed great solicitude for his unfortunate comrade, saying:
“Oh, excuse me, Andy, I didn’t know you were right under me, or I might have chosen some other place to land.”
“You don’t wonder at me being chained to this place, do you,” asked Hiram, “when there’s so much happening all the time, with pilots going up and coming down, agents explaining the use of new designs of aëroplanes they are putting on the market, and everybody ‘talking shop’? They reckon I’ve been employed in some place where they make these fliers, because I know somethin’ about them. So they let me help in a lot of ways. It’s fun, I tell you, the best fun I ever knew.”
Anyone could see that Hiram was right in his element. His freckled Yankee face seemed to glow with enthusiasm, and his little eyes shone in a way Rob had never noticed before. Indeed, if the scout leader had been inclined sometimes to fear Hiram would develop into a harmless crank, with only vague unreasonable ideas rattling about in his loose brain, that suspicion was rapidly vanishing.
Perhaps it had commenced to have an effect upon Rob’s opinion when he read that letter from the Golden Gate people. They were hard-headed business men, and not visionary dreamers; and surely they would never have advanced all that money to a strange inventor unless they believed in him, and meant to attach his genius to the fortunes of their company.
“I own up, Hiram,” said Andy, as they stood there and watched the many things that were going on all the time around them, “that there must be a sort of fascination about this thing to fellows who have a leaning that way. But as for me you never could tempt me to climb up thousands and thousands of feet like the air-pilot in the monoplane that looks like a swallow against the sky.”
“It takes some nerve, I’ll admit, Andy,” said Hiram, modestly.
“Huh! plenty of people may have nerve enough,” objected Andy, “but all the same they’d be laboring under physical disabilities.”
“As how, Andy?” asked the other.
“Oh, well, take our chum Tubby here; you never could expect him to make a flier, and bore up into the clouds. In the first place, it wouldn’t be fair to the people down below. He nearly killed me once by dropping just ten feet; think what would happen to the poor chap who happened to get in the way if Tubby came down from where that aviator is now?”