"I sincerely hope you will not," replied Astoria, looking at me with the most curious expression. "It would be much better to let me take you wherever you wish to go."
"That's awfully kind of you," I said, "but I don't care to go anywhere in particular this afternoon, except as far as possible from that objectionable young man."
The Astorian did not speak again till he had turned something in the machine to make it back and jerk, and, once free from the upset hay, go on again.
"Say, Sissy, I thought you was comin' to take dinner," Pop called out from under the wagon, where he had crawled for safety, and when I replied as nicely as I could, "No, thank you, not to-day," he said again, quite sadly as I thought, "Gosh blim me, if that don't beat the cats!" and also several other things I could not hear because we were moving away so rapidly.
When we had gone about a hundred miles—or yards, or inches, whichever it was—the Astorian, who had been sitting very straight, inquired if those gentlemen—meaning Pop and Jay—were near relatives.
I showed him plainly that I thought his question Uranian, and explained that I had not a relative on Earth. Then I told him exactly how I had come to be with them, and about my picnic and the egg. I am afraid I did not take great pains to make the story very clear, for it was such fun to perplex him. He is not at all like the Venus people, who have become so superlatively clever that they are always bored to death.
"Were you surprised to see me flying through the air?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he said; "I have always thought of you as coming to Earth in some such way from some far-distant planet."
"Oh, then, you know!" I gasped.
The Astorian laughed.