“I shall not see you again, as I am going out,” he said shaking hands cordially with Grace. “Good luck and don’t fall out.”
“So long as the basket keeps right side up I expect to be with it,” replied the Overton girl brightly. “Good-bye, sir, and thank you.”
“If I thought you would be in position to settle a wager, Loyalheart, I should like to lay a wager that that big sausage balloon comes down a hopeless wreck with you at the bottom of the heap,” observed Miss Briggs.
“Your reasoning is bad, J. Elfreda. Were we to make such a wager and I returned in condition to pay up, don’t you see that you would lose? I am not a lawyer, but my logic on rare occasions is really brilliant. Any rebuttal?”
“Not a word,” answered Elfreda, shrugging her shoulders. “I think the car is coming.”
Everything being ready the Overton girls were soon on their way to the balloon base, that is, on the way to Major Colt’s balloon base, for the sausage observation balloons were strung out over a line several miles in length. The big gas bag was swaying, chafing at its bit, as Grace characterized it, when they reached the base. They observed that the huge bag was attached by a cable to a big, heavy army truck, the shining cable being wound about a drum on a winch. As the army moved, the truck moved, and the crew either paid out the cable or wound it in, as the officer in the basket far above them wished to go up or down.
The cable looked a too slender thread to hold such a giant of a thing as a big observation balloon. Elfreda shook her head disapprovingly as she looked at the outfit with wide-open eyes.
“I’ll bet you really wish you were going up, too,” teased Grace, having observed the expression on the face of her companion.
“What! Never! I have no ambition to go skyward on a bubble. The bubble might burst.”
“In the first place, this isn’t a bubble, and in the second place I am not going to make a spectacular leap in a parachute. Good morning, Major,” greeted “Captain” Grace as the car drew up near where the officer, clad in his flying togs, was giving directions to the men. “How soon do we take the sky route?”