The doctor asked the question rather jerkily as the aeroplane sped over the uneven ground, jolting, and jouncing tremendously despite its chilled-steel spiral springs.
“In a moment,” explained Roy; “the extra weight makes her slower in rising than usual.”
“Look out, child!” yelled the doctor, suddenly, “you’ll crash into the fence.”
He half rose, but Roy pulled him back.
“It’s all right, doctor,” he said reassuringly.
But to the physician it seemed far otherwise. The fence he had alluded to, a tall, five-barred, white-washed affair, loomed right up in front of them. It seemed as if the aeroplane, scudding over the ground like a scared jackrabbit, must crash into it.
But no such thing happened.
As the ’plane neared the obstruction something seemed to impel it upward. Peggy pulled a lever and twisted a valve, and the motor, beating like a fevered pulse, answered with an angry roar.
The Golden Butterfly rose gracefully, just grazing the fence top, like a jumping horse. But, unlike the latter, it did not come down upon the other side. Instead, it soared upward in a steady gradient.
The doctor, his first alarm over, gazed about him with wonder, and perhaps a bit of awe. Many times had he and his dead friend, Mr. Prescott, talked over aerial possibilities, and he had always listened with interest to what the inventor had to say. But that he should actually be riding in such a marvellous craft seemed like a dream to this venerable man of science.