"H'm," murmured Mr. Graham, seriously; "I never thought to ask when I bought it. We'll have to give it a name that will do for either."
"There aren't any," announced Dicky firmly. "There'th only boy nameth and lady nameth."
"Then we'll have to make up a name. It wouldn't be a bad idea," said Graham, turning to one of his assistants. "Why not offer a prize to the person who suggests the most suitable name?"
"It would help keep up the interest."
"It doesn't look as if that would need any outside stimulus," smiled Graham, glancing at the crowd, held back now by ropes stretched from posts driven down into the beach.
When darkness fell electric lights were rigged so that the machinists might go on with their work, and all through the night they matched and fitted and screwed so that by morning the great bird was on its feet. By noon the engine was snapping sharply at every trial, and when the waning light of six o'clock fell on the lake all was in such condition that Mr. Graham was ready to make his first venture.
The Morton children were in the front rank of the crowd that thronged the grounds about the tents. An extra guard kept back the people who pressed too closely upon the preparations still under way, for a mechanical bird must be as carefully prepared for its flight as a horse for a race.
When all was well Mr. Graham mounted upon his seat. He wore just such a blue serge coat and just such white flannel trousers as a thousand men on the grounds were wearing, and the Mortons did not know whether to feel disappointed because his get-up was not more spectacular or to admire the coolness with which he stepped aboard for a flight that seemed to them fraught with peril in the every day garb of the ordinary man who never leaves the ground except in imagination.
"I like him this way," announced Ethel Blue. "It makes you feel as if he was so far from being afraid that he didn't even take the trouble to make any special preparations."
"I hoped he'd wear goggles and a leather suit and cap," said Roger, who was decidedly disappointed. "Those fellers look like some sports."