“Oh! yes,” Larry replied, “and that ought to interest you boys, because, you see, it was a pilot’s license, granted by some French Society of Aviators to a Jules Garrone. So it looks like the owner might have been reduced to robbing a store. Of course, when they find out who he is, and where he stays, he’ll have to explain how his license happens to be lying around loose in a place that has been robbed.”
“What beastly luck,” grunted Andy. “Here we’re just breaking into the honored ranks of air navigators, when some scamp has to go and disgrace his calling. Don’t I hope they get him, though, and send him up for a good term.”
“You blood-thirsty chap,” laughed Frank. “Just as if it had anything to do with the honor of the calling we’ve adopted as our own. Every profession has its black sheep—ministers, lawyers, doctors, all alike. All we have to do is to make good, and leave the rest. But let’s get busy, Andy. If we expect to have everything in apple-pie trim by tonight, we have little time to lose discussing things, even if they are thrilling.”
Frank seemed to be a trifle more thoughtful than ordinary as he continued his interrupted labors. Andy kept up a running fire of comment with the other boys as long as they remained. Finally both Elephant and Larry went away, and the cousins were left to their work.
Although they stepped outside about every half hour religiously during the afternoon, and each time scanned the tree-tops over in the quarter where the biplane had appeared just before noon, they saw no more of the flier.
Frank was of the opinion that, having tested it out, Percy Carberry had discovered certain weak stays that needed strengthening; and that the owners of the new air craft were putting in their time doing this.
Andy showed his gratification plainly.
“I was afraid they’d just come hovering over us here,” he said, as the sun drew closer down toward the horizon, and the biplane had not been sighted. “And it would have badgered me some to have the guys mocking us, and taunting us. Now they can’t go up, because there’s too much wind for greenhorns to buck against. And by tomorrow we’re just going to be on the map ourselves, mark me.”
“We certainly are,” added Frank, “if nothing happens to prevent it.”
“Why,” said the other, “what could happen to break us up?”