“Especially if we can get that French secretary, and Madam Hallowell. Now I’m off to soothe the aviator. Where did I put my check-book?” The aviator stood at his hangar door, winding a coil of wire. His lean body looked feather-light in its taut khaki; under the leathern helmet, his narrow, dark eyes glinted like the eyes of a falcon hooded against the sun. Blank, unsmiling, he heard my maunder of explanation. Somehow his cool aloofness daunted me a bit. But when I fumbled for my checkbook, he flashed alive. “Money? What for? Because the kid scraped an aileron? Forget it. I ain’t puttin’ up any holler. He’s fetched an’ carried for me all summer. I’m owin’ him, if it comes down to that.” “But Richard had no right to damage your machine—” “Well, he never meant to. That squally gust put him off tack, else he’d ’a’ brought her down smooth’s a whistle. For, take it from me, he’s a flier born. Hand, eye, balance, feel, he’s got ’em all. And he’s patient and speedy and cautious and reckless all at once. And he knows more about engines than I do, this minute. There’s not a motor made that can faze him. Say, he’s one whale of a kid, all right. If his folks would let me, I’d take him on as flyin’ partner. Fifty-fifty at that.” I stiffened a trifle. “You are very kind. But such a position would hardly be fitting—” “For a swell kid like him?” Under his helmet those keen eyes narrowed to twin points of light. “Likely not. You rich hill folks can’t be expected to know your own kids. You’ll send him to Harvard, then chain him up in a solid-mahogany office, with a gang of solid-mahogany clerks to kowtow to him, and teach him to make money. When he might be flyin’ with me. Flyin’—with me!” His voice shook on a hoarse, exultant note. He threw back his head; from under the leathern casque his eyes flamed out over the world of sea and sky, his conquered province. “When he might be a flier, the biggest flier the world has ever seen. Say, can you beat it? _Can_ you beat it?” His rudeness was past excuse. Yet I stood before him in the oddest guilty silence. Finally— “But please let me pay you. That broken strut—” “Nothing doing, sister. Forget it.” He bent to his work. “Pay me? No matter if my plane did get a knock, it was worth it. Just to see that fat guy in white pants hot-foot it for deep water! Yes, I’m paid. Good-by.” Then, to that day of shards and ashes, add one more recollection—Buster’s face when Aunt Charlotte laid it upon him that he should never again enter that hangar door. “Aunt Charlotte! For Pete’s sake, have a heart! I’ve got that plane eatin’ out of my hand. If that plaguy cat’s-paw hadn’t sprung up—” “You will not go to East Gloucester again, Richard. That ends it.” Aunt Charlotte swept from the room. “Gee!” Buster’s wide eyes filled. He slumped into the nearest chair. “Say, Cousin Edie! Ain’t I got one friend left on earth?” “Now, Richard—”