He held out his hand and Nan, with no more thought of the proprieties than a real mountain nymph would have had, let him help her into his machine. He wrapped a great coat around her, remarking that even nymphs might get cold, and seemingly with no more concern than Bill Tinsley felt over starting the mountain goat, he touched some buttons and turned some wheels and in a moment the aeroplane was gliding over the plateau and then floating in the air, mounting slowly over the tree tops. Up, up they went and then began making beautiful circles in the air. Nan sighed. "Are you scared?" and the aviator looked anxiously at his little companion. He had not resumed his helmet and goggles and his eyes were so kind and so merry that Nan felt as though she had known him all her life. "Scared! Of course not! I am just so happy." "Have you ever flown before?" "Not in reality--but it is just as I have dreamed it." "You dream then a great deal?" "Yes! 'In a dream all day I wander only half awake.' I am sure I must be dreaming now." "I, too! But then the best of life is the dreams, the greatest men are the dreamers. If it had not been for a dreamer, we could not have had this machine. Look! Isn't that wonderful?" Nan was looking with all eyes at the panorama spread out below them. The sun was up now in good earnest and the mountains had shaken off the mist as sleepers newly aroused might throw off their coverlids. The orchards in the valleys looked like cabbage beds and the great mansions that adorn the hills and are the pride and boast of the county seemed no larger than doll houses. From every chimney in the valley smoke was arising. Nan was disgusted with herself that again the thought came to her: "What are all of these people going to have for breakfast?" They dipped and floated and curvetted. Nan thought of Hawthorne's description of Pegasus in the "Chimæra" and the very first opportunity she had later on she got the book and reread the following passage: "Oh, how fine a thing it is to be a winged horse! Sleeping at night, as he did, on a lofty mountain-top, and passing the greater part of the day in the air, Pegasus seemed hardly to be a creature of the earth. Whenever he was seen, up very high above people's heads, with the sunshine on his silvery wings, you would have thought that he belonged to the sky, and that, skimming a little too low, he had got astray among our mists and vapors, and was seeking his way back again. It was very pretty to behold him plunge into the fleecy bosom of a bright cloud, and be lost in it for a moment or two, and then break forth from the other side." Once they went through a low-hanging cloud. Nan felt the drops of water on her face. "Why, it is raining!" she cried. "No, that was a cloud we dipped through," laughed her companion. "Are you cold?" "Cold? I don't know! I have no sensation but joy." The young man smiled. There was something about Nan's drawl that made persons want to smile anyhow.