Jeanne’s fingers trembled as she grasped one control after another, to set her plane to do Danby’s bidding. “What will be the result?” she was asking herself. Her great fear was that the mother bear would leap at the propeller. She had no desire to kill this mother, nor did she wish to lose her propeller.
To Jeanne the result was astonishing. No sooner had the “giant insect,” all made of metal, started toward the rocks than the mother bear, fearing no doubt for the safety of her children, started to beat its time.
“A race!” Vida shouted. “Goody! A race! And the big Dragon Fly will win!”
She was a greatly disappointed child when, after following the bear for a short distance, the plane swung round, increased its speed, went circling about the narrow landing field; then at Danby’s shout, “UP!”, left the ground to go sailing away among the clouds.
“Well,” Danby sighed as he settled back beside Jeanne, “we are out of that.”
“Yes,” Jeanne sighed happily. “We are out, and the big Dragon Fly is safe!”
CHAPTER VIII
TRAILING AN OLD PAL
That same evening Jeanne’s giant dragon fly came drifting sweetly down from the clouds to land at the Chicago airport. After a few words with Danby Force and a promise to meet him before the airport depot on the following day, she taxied her little plane into a hangar, gave the mechanics some very definite instructions regarding its care and general inspection, then went away with her gypsy companions to spend the night in a cozy Chicago haunt of those dark brown wanderers, the gypsies.
It was past mid-afternoon of the following day when a large, rosy-cheeked girl came striding along the path that leads to aviation headquarters. Had you noted her jaunty stride, the suggestion of strength that was in her every movement, the joyous gleam of youth that was in her eyes, you would have said: “This is our old friend Florence Huyler, her very own self.” And you would not have been wrong.
Had Petite Jeanne been there at that moment she must surely have leapt straight into her good pal’s strong arms. They had been separated for months, Jeanne had journeyed to France. Florence had been adventuring in her own land. Letters had gone astray, addresses lost, so now here they were in the same great city, but each ignorant of the other’s nearness. Would they meet? In a city of three million, one seldom meets casually anyone one knows.