After his first feeling of alarm had worn off the physician found that riding in an aeroplane after the preliminary run with its bumps and jouncings is over, is very like drifting gently over the fleeciest of clouds in a gossamer car, if such a thing can be imagined. In other words, the Golden Butterfly seemed not to be moving fast, but to be floating in the crystal clear atmosphere. But a glance over the edge of the high-sided chassis soon showed the physician that she was tearing along at a great rate at a height of about five hundred feet. Fields, woods, streams and small farmhouses swam by beneath their keel.
“Well, doctor, how do you like it?” Roy ventured, after a few moments.
“Like it!” repeated the physician; “my lad, it’s—it’s—it’s bully!”
And thus did his dignity fall like a mantle from Doctor Mays after a few moments in Peggy Prescott’s, the girl aviator’s, Golden Butterfly.
A few moments later they came in sight of the field in which they had left poor Jess lying by the side of the wrecked automobile.
Hardly had they alighted before Jimsy, a rather worried look on his face, was at the side of the aeroplane.
“Say, Roy,” he exclaimed, “you didn’t happen to put that jewel case in your pocket for safe keeping after the accident, did you?”
“Why, no. Jess had it and slipped it under the seat while she was driving,” cried Roy. “Why?”
“Because it’s gone!” exclaimed Jimsy, somewhat blankly.
“Gone! Impossible!” protested Roy.