"Whoop! hurrah! there they quit snaking along on the water! They're going to climb, I tell you, Larry! Look at that, would you? Up they go, as easy as you please! Now, ain't that just a hummer; and did you ever hear tell of as smart a pair of boys as Frank and Andy Bird? What won't they try next, I wonder?"
"They certainly seem to be made of the right stuff for airmen," admitted Mr. Marsh, with animation. "Some time I hope to make their acquaintance, and hear the story of their stirring adventure down in South America. What say Longley, can we afford to lay over at this Bloomsbury for a couple of days, while we have the car overhauled, and put in apple-pie condition?"
"It might be a good thing, Marsh," the other promptly answered, as he detected the signal wink his companion gave. "You know they say an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. And unless something is done we stand a chance of being thrown over a precipice, when that weak place in the machinery gives way suddenly."
"All right, then; we'll stop," remarked the gentleman with the glittering eyes, as if the new idea quite appealed to him. "I'd like to see something of these Bird boys. They have a future before them, I believe. And if I'm any judge of up-to-date things I even suspect they've gone and applied that latest device the Wrights patented, where a little pendulum under the machine warps the planes automatically, at the slightest motion of the body, keeping the aeroplane in an exactly horizontal position."
"Oh! they're up to snuff, all right, take it from me," declared Elephant, with an air of pride, since it was his friends whose praises were being sung, and he could bask in the reflected light.
"I bet you there ain't anything going on in aviation circles that them two boys don't know," put in Larry, enthusiastically. "They take all sorts of papers and magazines, and spend every living day in that old shop. I knew something was on, and there she is, all hatched out. Poor old Percy, won't he just want to crawl back into his hole, though, when he learns this?"
"Rats! you don't know him if you think that!" exclaimed Elephant. "Ten to one he plays Frank and Andy a close second. Right now that sharper has got cards hidden up his sleeve, and ready to surprise everybody. Didn't he slip away early in the spring, and go down to New York? You watch his smoke, I tell you, Larry. No, Perc ain't giving up till he has to, and that won't be till the race is run. Just wait!"
"I declare, that's a queer thing to allow!" exclaimed Longley, who had picked up the glasses and with them swept the surface of the lake, as well as surveyed the hovering biplane that had walked on the water like an aquatic bird.
"What now?" asked Mr. Marsh, looking a little nervous.
"Why, see that boat floating out yonder, the plaything of the breeze that seems to be rising?" asked the other, still using the binoculars.