"No, not even day-dreaming."
Just then Miss Prescott, her gentle face wreathed in smiles, appeared at the door.
"Children! children!" she exclaimed, "what is all this? Adjourn your discussion for a while and come in and have tea."
While the happy group of young fliers are entering the pretty, old-fashioned house with its clustering roses and green-shuttered casements, let us relate a little more about the young personages to whose enthusiastic talk the reader has just listened.
Roy and Peggy Prescott were orphans living in the care of their aunt, Miss Prescott, the location of whose home on Long Island has already been described. At school Roy had imbibed the aërial fever, and after many vicissitudes had built a fine monoplane, the Golden Butterfly, with which he had won a big money prize, besides encountering a series of extraordinary aërial adventures. In these Peggy participated, and on more than one occasion was the means of materially aiding her brother out of difficulties. All this part of their experiences was related in the first volume of this series, "The Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship."
In the second volume, "The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings," a combination of strange circumstances took our friends out to the Great Alkali of the Nevada desert. Here intrigues concerning a hidden gold mine provided much excitement and peril, and the girls proved that, after all, a fellow's sisters can be splendid companions in fun and hardship. An exciting race with an express train, and the adventure of the "Human Coyote," provided stirring times in this story, which also related the queer antics of Professor Wandering William, an odd character indeed. Space does not permit to relate their previous adventures in more detail, but in "The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise" still other interesting and unusual experiences are described,—experiences that tested both themselves and their machines in endurance flights.
Of Roy and Peggy's devoted friends, Jess and Jimsy Bancroft, it is enough to say that both were children of Mr. Bancroft, a wealthy banker, who had a palatial summer home near to the Prescotts' less pretentious dwelling. Since we last met Jess and Jimsy their father had allowed them to purchase an aëroplane known as the White Flier. It was in this craft that Jimsy and Roy had flown over for mail when they made their entrance at the beginning of this chapter. Of the letter they found awaiting them we already know.
Jolly, good-natured Bess Marshall had taken up aviation as a lark. She was a typical specimen of an American girl. Light-hearted, wholesome and devoted to all sorts of sports, tennis, swimming, golf, motoring and finally aviation had, in turn, claimed her attention.
And now, having introduced our heroes and heroines of the sky to those who have not already met them, we will proceed to see how Miss Prescott receives the startling plans that her young charges are about to lay before her.