“Want me to take the helm?” inquired Roy.
If Peggy had dared to turn her head she would have flashed an indignant glance at her brother. As it was she had to content herself with a very haughty, “No, indeed.”
Roy laughed.
“You surely are the original Girl Aviator,” he exclaimed.
“Huh!” cried Peggy, “by no means the original one, my dear. There are lots of them in Europe and there soon will be in this country, too.”
“I hope so,” responded Roy, “riding with a pretty girl in an aeroplane just suits me.”
But Peggy did not reply, and for a good reason. They were now just above the pasture lot in which she meant to descend, and below them, as they dropped, an amusing scene was transpiring.
The Doctor’s horse, old Dobbin, was dashing madly around in circles, faster than he had gone in twenty years of solid respectability; the two cows, and an old mother pig with her family, joined him as the strange whirring thing from the sky dropped lowering above them. As for the chickens, they flew wildly in every direction, clucking as if they had gone mad.
In the midst of the turmoil a rear door opened and a kindly-faced old man with white whiskers and a pair of big spectacles perched on his nose, emerged, to see what could be causing all the disturbance. He fairly dropped the big book he was holding, in his astonishment as he beheld a glistening object, like a huge yellow and spangled bird, dropping in his very back yard, so to speak. But the next instant he recovered himself.
“Bless my soul,” exclaimed Dr. Mays, for it was the retired physician himself, “I thought for a moment that the fabled days of the gigantic Roc, with which Sinbad the sailor had his adventures, had returned.