“And yet you are now going in for something which at times ought to make that Red Cross work look like little rides of joy. Ever take a spin in a plane?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, boy! There’s some job ahead of you, then.” Mittengale laughed. “You’ll have to get right down to business.”
“You can just better believe I will!” declared Don, enthusiastically. “I’m mighty anxious for the time to arrive when I can go up to business.”
“It may never come,” suggested Ben Holt. “’Tisn’t everybody who is fitted to be an airman. One or two bad spills—an airplane ready for the scrap pile, or a student now and then killed on the training field, and it’s all off with some!”
“If you don’t look out, Holt, we’ll elect you chairman and sole member of our committee on pessimism,” laughed Dorsey. “Say, son,”—he addressed Don—“I suppose you have all your papers?”
“Yes, and owing to my father having been a member of a Franco-American aviation corps I didn’t have much trouble in getting them,” returned Don. “He’s now an instructor in an American aviation school.”
“What did they do to you? I’d like to know if your experiences were like my own.”
“Well, here’s the story,” laughed the new élève[[1]] pilot. “I hoofed it to the recruiting office, which is located in the Invalides at Paris, filled out a questionnaire, signed a document requiring me to obey the military laws of France and be governed and punished thereby; then, after that agony was over, the medical man took me in charge. I just had to show him that I was able to balance myself on one foot with eyes closed, jump straight up from a kneeling position, and also walk a straight line after having been whirled around and around on a revolving stool until all the joy in life seemed to have gone.”
