“Yes, but now I see what can be done with it—and—you’re a genius.”
“No, you’re the genius,” Harry answered; “you’d have worked it up this way sooner or later. You see, your plane was too small for your motor; then, again, this isn’t a first-rate propeller, it hasn’t enough slant.”
“I know how to make one,” Penfield broke in. “You cut strips of cigar-box wood, glue them on top of each other, put a nail in the middle, then before they begin to dry, twist them a little, as you do with a pack of cards. When the pile dries, whittle off the uneven edges, and you’ve got a dandy propeller. It’s easier than trying to make one out of one piece.”
“How’d you learn that?” Harry asked.
“Oh, I thought of it when I saw some one twist a pack of cards.”
They went up a gravel walk which wound through the green lawn, and found Mr. and Mrs. Danforth on the porch. Penfield disappeared and Mrs. Danforth greeted the boys, thanking Harry profusely for his service to her son. They found it was true that Mr. Danforth was building a house in Oakwood and that the family were to go there early in the Fall.
“We have done everything we could for Penfield,” said Mrs. Danforth. “We bought this place so that he might have the mountain air, and we are leaving New York for the same reason. Yet we can’t get him to go outdoors and play with other boys. He would much rather sit in the house and read. Last year the boys in Ticonderoga had a baseball eleven, the small boys, and asked him to play quarterstop—”
“Shortstop,” corrected her husband.
“But we couldn’t get him to, he simply wouldn’t. And it was the same with football. He would not go on the frying pan.”
“Gridiron,” said Mr. Danforth.