Of course I had shouldered a new responsibility. I had an expensive, inanimate object on my hands. I wanted it to look all right on the outside and _be_ all right on the inside. Few words are more expressive than “care and upkeep.” Fortunately in their obligations I was remarkably lucky. The plane was an experiment for Kinner, a model for production. Obviously he wanted to have demonstrated exactly what it could do. When I was around, I was informally a sort of demonstrator—we agreed that he could use it for demonstration in return for free hangar space, and I was given much mechanical help, and other assistance in addition to hangar space. It was this situation, I suppose, which really made it possible for a “telephone girl” to carry on. At any rate, to me the important fact is, that I secured many free hours in the air and much kindly help. Demonstrating has other advantages; it means an effort to sell someone something. And selling involves debating the virtues of the thing to be sold, the prospective purchaser usually being on the silent end of the debate. So I found myself studying the virtues of my plane, and in so doing, those of others. The first thing most people want to do when they get a new car is to take someone out driving in it; a desire which seems to apply equally to a plane. Somehow I have always felt a little differently. It isn’t that I am not proud of my possession, but that I always have a suspicion that my pride may run away with my prudence. If it be car or plane, my inclination is to be absolutely sure of myself before I whisk anybody else’s body around in it. Consequently my air passengers were few. As a matter of fact, I have never asked any men to take a ride. I think I have always feared that some sense of gallantry would make them accept, even though they did not trust me. So my male passengers have always had to do the asking. There were plenty of potential joy riders around the fields in those days. Many of them had drifted into aviation after the war—or rather had not drifted out. They wanted to be near planes, and accepted any opportunity to take a ride no matter who the pilot or what the machine. From this gang have graduated many of the men who are today the real working human backbone of the industry. From them were recruited the gypsy flyers who barnstormed their way around the country and whose activities actually figured largely in the development of American aviation. It was they who kept alive public interest. Mostly they flew wrecks, old war crates tied together with baling wire. Anything that would get off the ground—most of the time—was good enough for them. Many of them, of course, paid a heavy price for their devotion. I didn’t like public flying. It didn’t coincide with my ideas of what I wished to do with my plane. It was hard enough to keep out of the papers anyway in those days if one flew. The slightest mishap was called a crash and disasters were played up lugubriously.