“But he feels he can treat me just as though he were. After all, Jess, Mark Stratford is a whole lot nicer to us. He acts as though we were grown up.”
“You seem to be taking a leaf from Belle Ringold’s book,” said her chum scornfully. “I do not want to be treated as though I were twenty-five. No, indeed.”
“I don’t believe even Belle wants to be considered twenty-five,” giggled Amy.
When the boys came back from Stratfordtown they reported Mark as having almost recovered from his fall in the aeroplane.
“You can’t kill that bird with an ax,” declared Alling, in his cheerfully slangy way. “He has been through more trouble than a hen with twenty-four ducklings. He’s fallen down from the sky, and been shot out of a car over a cliff, and shot down by Fritzes, and shot up by highwaymen, and——”
“You’ve a fine imagination,” interrupted Amy scornfully. “We saw Mark fall, and he wasn’t any better looking when he landed than any other unfortunate victim.”
“Say,” Darry said, “what do you suppose became of that watch of his?”
Jessie and Amy looked at each other and the former slightly shook her head. So Amy was apparently as unsuspicious as the boys themselves.
“If he came down the way he said he did, a bird might have picked it out of his pocket and he wouldn’t know about it,” declared Burd. “Huh! Think of bothering your head about a watch when you’ve just smashed a perfectly good airplane all to bits.”
“I guess he thinks more of his grandmother’s gift than he did of the plane,” said Jessie. “But Amy and I have looked all around and we can’t find the watch.”