Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 24

FLYING

"NEWS, news, news," shouted Roger as he turned a cartwheel before the porch on which his mother was sitting. It was the day after Old First Night.

"What is it? Vera Cruz--?" asked Mrs. Morton and Ethel Blue, whose thoughts always were with the Navy and Army.

"Nothing to do with Vera Cruz," Roger rea.s.sured them. "This event is much nearer home. It isn't any farther away from home than from here to the steamboat dock."

"What is it, Roger?" demanded Helen. "You're so tantalizing!"

"Oh, for the white wings, sailing, sailing," sang Roger, advancing gracefully with outstretched arms and retreating abruptly as d.i.c.ky made a rush at him, head down like a young goat.

"Are you going to sail in the _Humbug_ again?"

"Has she won another race?"

"Come, birdie, birdie, perch on this twig," cooed Ethel Brown with a gesture toward the piazza rail, "and tell us all about it."

Roger responded to this appeal, especially as it was re-enforced by the bait of a fresh cooky, held out invitingly.

"Ladies," he began impressively, as he roosted on the offered rail and took a generous bite out of the cooky.

"Just an instant, Roger, until that cooky disappears," begged his mother with upraised hand.

"I can talk all right," mumbled Roger.

"But we can't hear you all right," retorted Helen.

"Oh, come, you like cookies as well as I do," remonstrated her brother, taking in the last crumb.

"Certainly I do, and Ethel Brown's are the best ever, but I eat mine in sections."

"So do I--two sections," grinned Roger. "There, now I'm sufficiently refreshed to tell you the news. I suppose you poor creatures didn't realize there was any news, eh?"

"By a strenuous use of our wits we gathered that there was something in the air when we saw you approach," murmured Helen, who sometimes found Roger trying.

"List, then, beloved members of my family----"

"Hark to the troubadour," mocked Ethel Blue.

"Now, child, if you interrupt your uncle Roger you won't ever learn this thrilling piece of information that is about to fall from my ruby lips."

"Chirp on, then, ornithological specimen."

"Ma'am!" exclaimed Roger, burlesquing a fall from the railing.

"Fortunately you don't catch me in the state of ignorance that you supposed when you hurled that awful language at me. I haven't got a grandmother who is a member of the Rosemont Bird and Tree Club for nothing. An 'ornithological specimen' is just slang for 'bird.' Look out or I'll retaliate with 'chicken.'"

"I'm no chicken," denied Ethel Blue instantly.

"Look at that, Mother!" implored Roger. "All fussed up over a trifle like that! And the funny part is that if _I_ said she was 'no chicken'

she'd be just as mad! Girls are so queer," and he heaved an exaggerated sigh of perplexity.

"Do let's have your news if it's worth telling," asked Mrs. Morton.

"She doubts me," commented Roger haughtily. "Ha! You'll see, madam, that you have no reason to throw asparagus on my announcement. It's real news that I'm bringing. Chautauqua, the spot that we're honoring by our presence this summer, Chautauqua--is to have a birdman!"

The result of Roger's announcement was all that he had hoped and more than he had expected. The Ethels fairly pranced with excitement. Helen clapped her hands excitedly, and Mrs. Morton laid down her embroidery to ask, "When is he to come?"

"How perfectly stunning!"

"Where will he fly from?"

"Where's he going to keep his machine?"

"Is he going to take pa.s.sengers?"

The questions flew fast and Roger covered his ears as if they overwhelmed him. He answered his mother's question first.

"He's due to-morrow, Mother. They're starting right this minute to put up the tent he's going to use for his hangar. It's down side of the steamboat dock. His machine is what they call a hydro-aeroplane--"

"It will go both in the water and in the air?"

"So I understand. I saw a picture of it and it looked to me as if it could go on land, too, for men were pulling it down to the water's edge on its own wheels."

"Probably the engine doesn't work the wheels, though."

"Probably not enough for it to travel far on them. He starts off on the water, anyway, and then he rises from the water and the machine goes along like any aeroplane. It's a biplane."

"Meaning?" queried Ethel Brown.

"That it has two planes--two sets of wings on each side."

"You didn't tell us whether he's going to carry pa.s.sengers."

"I don't know. I asked, but n.o.body seemed ready to answer."

"Let's go down to the dock and see them put up the hangar."

"After dinner, children, after dinner," insisted Mrs. Morton. "How long will he stay, Roger?"

"A week or two."

"Then you can surely eat your dinner before rushing off. We're so near the dock you can easily see every flight if you put your minds on it."

Mrs. Emerson smiled at her daughter's words, for they both recalled a time when the Morton children were so eager to see a new teacher who had just come to Rosemont that they almost lived on the sidewalk in front of her house, in order that no pa.s.sage in or out might escape them.

Seldom was a meal in the Morton dining-room disposed of with such slight attention as this dinner which had to be met and conquered before the reconnaissance could be made. Both Ethels declared that they really did not feel at all like having dessert to-day, and they seemed grieved when Mrs. Morton regretted their lack of interest in it, but failed to take it as a reason for allowing them to leave the table before the rest of the family had finished.