"Well, I promised Bland I'd take him to the Coast. I intend to make aviation my real profession, of course. You surely didn't think, Mary V, that I'd be satisfied to bog down in a job that just barely pays living wages? It's all right for fellows like Bud and Curley and Bill, maybe; but I couldn't go on all my life riding bronks and mending fence and such as that. I've just got to ride the sky, and that's all there is to it. Luck happened to come my way, so I can do it a little sooner than I expected; but I'd have done it anyway, soon as the way was clear. "Aviation is the coming game, Mary V, and it's my game. Why, look what they're doing over in France! And if this country should get let in for a fight, wouldn't they need flyers? I'm not like Bland: I don't just look at it as furnishing thrills to a crowd that is watching to see you break your neck. Exhibition flying is all right, for a side line. But me, I'm going to go after something bigger than the amusement end. I--" his eyes grew round and dreamy, his lips quivering with all the wonderful future he saw before him, "I've thought maybe France or England might want me and my plane--to help lick those Germans. Honest, Mary V, their work is awful raw--blowing up passenger ships and killing children and women--and, of course, we aren't doing anything much about it; but if my little old boat could maybe bring down just one of those raiders that fly over England and drop bombs on houses where there's kids and women, I'd be willing to call it a day!" "B-but that's dangerous, Johnny! You--you'd be killed, and--and it's so much finer to go on living and doing a little good right along every day. It would count up more--in the long run. And we're neutral. I--I don't think you ought to!" "Why not? That's the biggest thing the world has ever seen or will see. The men that are in it--look what they're doing! It's tremendous, Mary V! It would be hitting a wallop for civilization." "It would be getting yourself killed! And then what? What good is civilization to you after you're all smashed to pieces? You--you wouldn't be a drop in the bucket, Johnny Jewel! If it was our war--but to go and butt in on something away over there is absolutely foolish. What if you got one? You couldn't get them all, and there'd be a dozen to take its place. "But that's the way it goes. You get a streak of perfectly unbelievable good luck, and have an aeroplane just practically drop into your hands, and then you spoil it all by wanting to do some crazy thing that is absolutely idiotic. I should think you'd be contented with what you've got; but no, you must take your aeroplane right straight over to Europe and let the Germans smash it all to pieces and kill you and everything. Why, I never _heard_ of anything so absolutely imbecile as that!"