"What ails that brown rascal?" he asked, staring after Ben Ali. "He's in as bad a taking as the girl. What did he say about her? I've never been able to get him to tell me anything about her spells."
"He tells me that she will be all right in a little while," answered Matt.
"Then we'll delay the flight. It will be half an hour yet before all the people get here."
Matt peered at the showman as though he thought him out of his senses.
"You don't mean to say that you want the girl to ride a trapeze under the Comet?" he demanded.
"Why not?" Burton answered. "You said you'd take her, and she's willing to go—she wants to go."
"When I said I'd take her," returned Matt, "I didn't know anything about her spells. Suppose she were to have one while we're in the air? Why, Burton, she might throw herself from the trapeze."
"No," declared the other, "she wouldn't do that. After she has one spell, I understand she doesn't have another for days, or weeks. It's been a month since she had the last. Why, in St. Paul, she had one ten minutes before she went to the ring for her trapeze work—and she never did better. If Ben Ali says she'll be all right in a little while he ought to know."
"I protest against allowing her to go up in the aëroplane," said Matt firmly. "When the machine is off the ground it has to have my whole attention. I won't be able to look after Haidee without endangering both our lives."
A hard look came into Burton's face.