Bowing to Poodle, the reporter said, “Is this Mr. Griffin?” Poodle shrugged his shoulders, pointed to the bed where the bell-boy lay, and turned back to look out of the window, with great dignity. (This last was spoiled, dreadfully, for Hike found a carpet-tack that was wandering around idly beneath the bed, and shied it out at Poodle, who squeaked and then looked silently foolish.) Began the reporter: “_Good_ morning, Mr. Griffin. I wished—You saw my account of your second flight, in this morning’s _Crier_, I hope.” “Yuh. I seen it,” growled the bell-boy. “And I been wanting to tell you how it was wrong what you put in the paper. You said how the tehedrum was invented by Bell, the guy what made the telephone, first, and then Priest, he took it up. That ain’t right. _I_ made it up, outa my own head.” “You did?” feverishly inquired the reporter, writing a couple of words on one sheet of paper, and beginning to sketch the bell-boy on another sheet. “Sure did I. I told Priest how to make it. You don’t believe me, heh? Say, you young slab-sided, four-eyed, grinning, big-toothed, yellow-fingered lump of mud, don’t you t’ink that Priest guy’d ’a’ brought his blooming old tehedrum hisself, if he—” “Uh, ‘tetrahedral,’ you mean, of course, Mr. Griffin,” smiled the reporter, _very_ politely. “Aw, you pen-pushers gimme a pain in de apoplexy! ‘Tehedrum’—dat’s wot all us aviators calls it, see? you bunch o’ grins.” “Ahem!” gently protested Poodle, by the window. “Cheese it!” gently murmured Hike, under the bed, trying to kick the bell-boy through the mattress, without being seen. “Huk kuh!” gently coughed the reporter, then smiled again. “Your language is very interesting, Mr. Griffin—quite racy. Oh, please don’t think I don’t _admire_ it. I was just contrasting it with the weak-kneed way in which most boys—uh, most young men of your age talk.” “Say, youse. ’F youse don’t like de way me talk-trap works, youse kin put a’ egg in your shoe and beat it, see? Tell you how it was. You see, me dad—he’s a Colonel, his antcisters was dukes and t’ings in England—he didn’t want me to grow up like a collidge professor or any o’ them softies, so he makes me work in a mine, an’ I was to sea, as a cabin-boy (I was wrecked, twict, and I fit with Chink pirates—one of ’em gives me a blob on the head, like to kill me), and I’ve bummed it—reg’lar hobo, and I was a newsboy in N’ Yawk, and a bell-hop in Denver (I licked two _reporters_ dere, one time; one of ’em looked an awful lot like you; Smith, his name was; gee! how I did slam dat guy!), and I worked in a machine-shop, carrying left-hand monkey-wrenches to the straw-boss—dat’s where I learned about machines.” “Well, well,” delightedly chuckled the reporter, making notes of these remarkable adventures. “Splendid story,” he was thinking, “splendid.” He was very respectful. He was ready to believe almost anything about the boy who had made the greatest aeroplane-flight in history.