“I wonder,” said Frank to himself, noticing his cousin’s downcast appearance, “whether that boy is really disappointed because we’re not the first in the aviation field here at Bloomsbury, or if he feels a bit sore because the Carberry biplane failed to get in trouble on its novice flight. But I’d better get to work on those planes. We must have our machine ready today and if tomorrow looks good, try it out.”
So he went energetically to work, trying to put the other aeroplane out of mind for the time being. And yet it might have been noticed that several times Frank found an excuse to issue forth from the shed on some errand, and that on every occasion his eyes naturally sought that region where the strange bird had been so lately soaring.
On his last trip it had vanished and he supposed that the boys, satisfied with having shown what they could do, had alighted again.
Just then Andy came hurrying forth, devouring a wedge of pie as he advanced and crooking his neck in the vain endeavor to locate the biplane.
“Where did she go to?” he exclaimed. “Don’t tell me they took a cropper and that it’s all off? That would be a big disappointment, for I’ve made up my mind that I don’t want to see Puss and Sandy get hurt. Because, in that case there couldn’t be any race on Old Home day. And I’ve just set my heart on beating ’em to the top of the mountain.”
Frank laughed.
“I must say your heart has become mighty tender of late, Andy,” he remarked, as he washed his hands at the tin basin they kept at the shed. “But make your mind easy, for I reckon they only dropped down to get dinner. You’ll see them enough this afternoon. And ten to one they fly over us here, just to laugh.”
“I’ll make sure to be inside then,” grumbled Andy, dejectedly. “But get along with you, Frank. Colonel Josiah is dying to ask you a whole lot of questions. He tired me out, and besides, I wasn’t feeling like explaining just how we came to play second fiddle to those sneaks.”
Evidently Andy felt pretty “sore,” as he expressed it. When Frank later on came out of the house he found that Elephant Small had arrived, being deeply interested in the construction of the monoplane.
Elephant had, of course, seen the biplane in the air. He had even increased his customary snail’s pace in order to reach the field of the flight before the boys came down.