“Well, work ain’t got any call on either Felix or me until we see all that goes on, that’s flat,” remarked the farmer, with a smile, “and it’s lucky he done the milkin’ already, or else the cows’d have to wait long after their usual hour, which is a bad way to treat ’em, you know.”

They all went out to the field, even the housewife and little Billie wanting to see what a real aeroplane looked like at close quarters.  Many times had all of them seen the Bird boys, and perhaps Percy Carberry as well, soaring aloft as if the upper air currents might be their natural heritage; but up to now they had never had the chance to examine one of the wonderful machines, and touch the various parts gingerly as though afraid of injuring them.

“Beats all what people are a-doing nowadays,” ventured the farmer, shaking his head with astonishment, almost awe, as he looked the thing over.  “They ain’t even contented to just fly like a red-tailed hawk, or an eagle that kin look the sun direct in the eye; but now they got to have a contraption that’s at home in the air or on the water; a hydroplane you called, it didn’t you, Andy?  And them ere twin pontoons underneath, that look kinder like gondolas, as you say, are made of aluminum, and kin hold up the whole affair when you light on water.  But tell me, how in all creation kin you ever mount up agin, once you settle there?”

“Why that’s the easiest thing of all,” replied the young aviator; “you’ve watched a wild duck get up many a time, haven’t you, Mr. Quackenboss; well, we do just the same, only instead of flapping our wings, we start the engine, and skim along the surface for a little distance, then elevate the planes, and immediately begin to soar upward.  And it does the stunt as gracefully as anything you ever saw.  Some time I hope to give you a chance to see how it works.  When we leave here, of course we’ll use the bicycle wheels you see underneath, and run along the ground until going fast enough to soar.  But I think I see Frank coming, away down the road there.”

“That’s right,” declared the farmer; “I know my Bob as far as I can see him, and his gallop in the bargain.”

Frank was evidently coming at full speed, and Andy presently got the idea in his head that his cousin seemed to be strangely in a hurry for him.  He wondered whether anything could have happened at home, and if Frank would prove to be the bearer of bad news.

The other dashed into the narrow road leading from the pike to the barns of the Quackenboss farm.  Hitching the horse to a post, he started toward the spot in the big field where the two boys and the farmer awaited his coming, close beside the stranded aeroplane.

Frank was carrying the little part he had expected to knock together at the workshop; but as he drew nearer, his chum could readily see that he was considerably excited.

“Is everything all right here, Andy?” he called out, even before reaching them.