“Oh,” she exclaimed at last, as she smiled radiantly through her tears, “I’m so happy that I can hardly bear it! Surely God has sent you to me.”
“I believe so,” smiled the other, who herself was a mere girl, not much older than Cora herself. “But now go ahead and tell me just how you came to be lost.”
She listened with the greatest sympathy and interest while Cora narrated all that had happened to her since the day before.
Then in her turn she explained that she was making a cross-country flight from Chicago to New York. She was bent on beating the best record ever made for the distance by either man or woman, and was in a fair way to do it.
“My engine began working badly a little while ago,” she explained. “The ignition was balky and I thought I’d better come down and fix it before it got worse.”
Cora looked at her with admiration, and expressed it warmly.
“I don’t see how you dare to take such risks,” she said. “It must take a tremendous amount of courage.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other modestly. “But there’s a lot of satisfaction in beating the men at their own game,” she added mischievously.
“We women all owe you a lot for doing it,” laughed Cora happily. “It does the men good to have some of the conceit taken out of them. But just the same I startled you when I appeared so suddenly at your side,” she added, with a spark of mischief in her eyes.
“Yes,” admitted the other. “I didn’t know that I was within miles of anybody at all you see.”