But Peggy, with that quick decision which was characteristic of her, was already half way to the aeroplane. A moment more and she was in the chassis, and slipping into the driver’s seat began adjusting the motor.
“I’ll leave you to look after Jess,” said Roy to Jimsy, “while I go along with Peggy. I’m not sure that she is as expert in managing an aeroplane as she thinks she is.”
“Well, she brought me over here at a great rate, anyhow,” put in Jimsy, loyally.
“And in the nick of time, too,” said Roy, warmly pressing the other’s hand.
“Oh, do be back as quickly as possible, my foot hurts dreadfully,” moaned poor Jess, “and my head feels as if a thousand dwarfs were hammering away inside it.”
“We’ll be back before you expect us,” Roy said, cheerily. Jimsy shouted something, but his words were drowned in the roar of the motor as Roy clambered into the Golden Butterfly and Peggy started the engine.
The aeroplane dashed forward over the smooth turf and then seemed to take the air as lightly and easily as a bit of gossamer. Straight up it soared, high above the tree tops, and was speedily reduced to a fast diminishing speck in the northwest in which direction lay Doctor Mays’ home. Looking downward from the speeding flyer the boy and girl aviators could see, spread out below them like a checkerboard, the fertile Long Island landscape.
Through it ran the railroad, looking like a glittering ribbon of steel. Off to the north the sea sparkled, a few white sails dotting its surface. The Black Rock lighthouse, painted in bands of red and white, formed a conspicuous object.
All at once, on the road beneath them, Roy spied a solitary motor-cyclist whom, even at the height to which they had now risen, he recognized as Fanning Harding. He called his sister’s attention to the rider.
“He must have passed right by where the accident happened,” he remarked; “that road has no outlet for some distance. Funny that he didn’t come to help us.”