CHAPTER XIII.
JUKES DADE APPEARS.
The aviation field at Acatonick a few days before the big contests for juvenile aviators was alive with action and color. The spot selected was a flat, smooth field of some fifty acres on the outskirts of the town.
The grass spread a green carpet, thickly sprinkled with wild flowers, while at one side of the place was a row of green-painted sheds known as the “hangars.”
“Hangar is French for shed,” Peggy had explained to a group of friends from Sandy Bay whom she was showing over the grounds, “and I think that shed is a whole lot better word than ‘Ongar,’ which is the way you are supposed to pronounce it.”
One of the sheds—as in deference to Peggy we shall call them—was of a different color, and stood somewhat apart from the rest. It was also much larger and bore in consequential-looking letters over its door the words:
“Harding Aeroplane Company. Keep Out.”
And to see that this notice was enforced to the letter, Fanning Harding had installed a red-nosed watchman with a formidable club at the portal. Considerable secrecy, in fact, had been observed concerning his aeroplane. Several large boxes had arrived one night and been hustled as quickly as possible into the shed.
The shed assigned to Roy Prescott, happened, by an odd coincidence, to be next door to the Harding one. The second day of their stay at Acatonick, Roy, on coming down to the field from the hotel at which he and Peggy and Miss Prescott were stopping, was much surprised to be greeted by Fanning, with some effusiveness.
After a lot of preliminary hemming and hawing, Fanning broached to Roy once more the proposition of selling the Golden Butterfly.