They dipped and floated and curvetted. Nan thought of Hawthorne’s description of Pegasus in the “Chimæra” and the very first opportunity she had later on she got the book and reread the following passage:
“Oh, how fine a thing it is to be a winged horse! Sleeping at night, as he did, on a lofty mountain-top, and passing the greater part of the day in the air, Pegasus seemed hardly to be a creature of the earth. Whenever he was seen, up very high above people’s heads, with the sunshine on his silvery wings, you would have thought that he belonged to the sky, and that, skimming a little too low, he had got astray among our mists and vapors, and was seeking his way back again. It was very pretty to behold him plunge into the fleecy bosom of a bright cloud, and be lost in it for a moment or two, and then break forth from the other side.”
Once they went through a low-hanging cloud. Nan felt the drops of water on her face.
“Why, it is raining!” she cried.
“No, that was a cloud we dipped through,” laughed her companion. “Are you cold?”
“Cold? I don’t know! I have no sensation but joy.”
The young man smiled. There was something about Nan’s drawl that made persons want to smile anyhow.
“You forgot your hat and goggles,” she said as she noticed his blue eyes and the closely cropped brown hair that looked as though it had to be very closely cropped to keep it from curling.
“That’s so! Some day maybe I shall go back after them. Now shall we fly to ’Frisco? How about High Olympus? Remember we are on Pegasus now and he can take us wherever we want to go.”
“Breakfast first,” drawled Nan. “Come with me and I can feed you on nectar and ambrosia.”