Naturally she was overjoyed by her success, yet she never once lost her humble and unassuming manner or considered the applause in the light of a personal eulogy. Devoting herself seriously and with care to every detail of her work she strove to exhibit Steve’s aircraft in a manner to prove its excellence, and considered that her important aim.
There was nothing reckless about Orissa’s flights; her success, then and afterward, may be attributed to her coolness of head, a thorough understanding of her machine and a full appreciation of her own ability to handle it. The flattery and adulation she received did not destroy her self-poise or cause one flutter of her heart, but when anyone praised the merits of the Kane Aircraft, she flushed with pleasure and pride. For Orissa firmly believed she basked in the reflected glory of her brother’s inventive genius, and considered herself no more than a showman employed to exhibit his marvelous creation.
“You see,” she said to Chesty Todd, who stood beside her in the hangar on the last day of the meet while she watched Mr. Cumberford and his assistants preparing the aircraft for its final flight, “Stephen has a thorough education in aëronautics and knows the caprices and requirements of the atmosphere as well as a gardener knows his earth. The machine is adjusted to all those variations and demands, and that is why it accomplishes with ease much that other aëroplanes find difficult. A child might operate the Kane Aircraft, and I feel perfectly at ease in my seat, no matter how high I am or how conflicting the air currents; for Steve’s machine will do exactly what it is built to do.”
“The machine is good,” observed Chesty, “but your sublime self-confidence is better. You’re a conceited young lady—not over your own skill, but over that of your brother.”
She laughed.
“Haven’t I a right to be?” she asked. “Hasn’t Steve proved his ability to the world?”
The boy nodded, a bit absently. He was thinking how good it was to find a girl not wrapped up in herself, but unselfish enough to admire others at her own expense. A pretty girl, too, Chesty concluded with a sigh, as he watched her prepare to start. What a pity he had lived all of twenty-one years and had not known Orissa Kane before!
By some sleight-of-hand, perhaps characteristic of the fellow, Chesty had attached himself to the “Kane-Cumberford Combination,” as he called it, like a barnacle. At first both Steve and Cumberford frowned upon his claim to intimacy, but the boy was so frankly attracted to their camp, “where,” said he, “I can always find people of my own kind,” that they soon became resigned to the situation and accepted his presence as a matter of course.
Sybil treated this new acquaintance with the same calm indifference she displayed toward all but her father and, latterly, Stephen Kane. Chesty found in her the most puzzling character he had ever met, but liked her and studied the girl’s vagaries from behind a bulwark of levity and badinage. Perhaps the reporter’s most loyal friend at this time was Mrs. Kane, who had promptly endorsed the young man as a desirable acquisition to their little circle. In return Chesty was devoted to the afflicted woman and loved to pay her those little attentions she required because of her helplessness.
Mr. Cumberford celebrated the closing day of the meet by giving a little dinner to the Kanes in his private rooms at the hotel that evening, and Chesty Todd was included in the party. Stephen attended in a wheeled chair and was placed at one end of the table, while Orissa occupied the other. The central decoration was a floral model of the Kane Aircraft, and before Orissa’s plate was laid a crown of laurel which her friends tried to make her wear. But the girl positively refused, declaring that Stephen ought to wear the crown, while she was entitled to no more credit than a paid aviator might be.