“Permit me to put in, dear lady,” said Teddy Candelish, with his best professional manner, “that if you fall out of an airship, you eventually finish on the ground!”
“Under,” gloomily interpolated De Petoburgh. “Under.”
“And, further,” said Bobby Bolsover, “the guide-rope is in connection with the ground all the time. Seventy feet of it, trailing like——”
“Snakes!” said the irrepressible De Petoburgh, with a glassy stare.
“And,” went on Bobby, “we will have four picked men from the Highfliers’ Club Grounds to run beside the guide-rope all the way and back.”
“Thus combining personal advertisement,” said Teddy Candelish, “with physical integrity.”
Mrs. Gudrun permitted her classical features to soften. “Now you’re talking!” the lady said. She smiled through the bottom of her champagne-glass as Teddy, bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, and the trip was arranged forthwith. Thanks to the discretion of Teddy Candelish, the preparations were kept so profoundly secret that all Paris was on the alert when the eventful morning dawned. The Highfliers’ Club Grounds were literally besieged, and the intending sky-navigators fought their way to the aërodrome containing their vessel through a surging throng of scientists, editors, journalists, dandies, actresses, photographers, pickpockets, and politicians.
“Regular scrimmage—what?” panted Bobby Bolsover, as, bare-headed and disheveled, he reached the private side-door of the balloon-house.
“We ought to have slept here,” said Mrs. Gudrun, straightening her hat-brim as the breathless men collected her hairpins.
“Nothing but perches to sleep on,” objected Bobby Bolsover, indicating the skeleton arrangements of the vast interior.