Summer days passed rapidly.  Joe Little and Louis Deschamps were sitting in a hangar one Sunday afternoon, chatting about a new type of battle-plane that had arrived that week.

“I could fly that bus,” said Joe, “if I had a chance.”

“That is just the trouble,” commented Louis.  “Getting the chance is what is so hard.  I am tired of fussing around on those school machines they let us on now and then.  What is the good of trying to fly on a plane that won’t rise more than a couple of dozen feet?  I have never had a chance to fly anything else.  I get to thinking, working so much on real planes, that those school machines for the infant class are not fliers at all.  They are a sort of cross between a flying machine and an auto.”

“You are in too much of a rush,” Joe admonished.  “I think we are lucky to get a go in one of those now and then.  Jimmy Hill goes up in that old dual-control bus with Adams, but to my mind that sort of thing is out of date.  I have got the idea of lateral control as well on that school bus that Parks let me out on, as I could have got it from any of the chasers.  Another go or two and I will get horizontal control down fine, and then I am ready for a real go.  I can land the school bus like a bird.  I am getting swelled up, Louis.”

“All right.  But don’t get so swelled that you play the goat, Joe.  I know you won’t, for that matter.  You are one of the careful ones, all right.  But this does not get us any nearer flying a real machine.”

“I wish I had a machine of my own,” said Joe mournfully.

“Wishing won’t get it, Joe.”

“I wonder why we can’t get hold of a machine that has been finished off by one of these cheerful student chaps, and still has some good stuff left in it, and get Parks to let us patch it up and get a flight on it?”

“Parks can’t be all that generous of government property, old man.  If a plane is worth fixing up the chief wants the rest of the use of it.  If it is no good to him it would not be worth anything to us; that’s the rub there.”

“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Joe, slapping his knee.  “Why not hit Parks for that old ‘bad bus’ that gave the young fellow the broken leg the last time it smashed?  There is plenty of life left in that old girl.  I wonder they haven’t taken the engine out of her if they don’t intend to fix her up, The engine is all right.”

“Maybe the engine is out of her.  Where is she?”

“Down in number twelve hangar, covered up in the corner.”

“Let’s go and have a look at her.”

The two lads trotted off to inspect the damaged plane, which they found under a pile of canvas, just where it had been brought the day a bad side-slip had resulted in smashing it up.

“The engine is in her, sure enough,” said Louis, “and it is by no means a bad type of engine either.  It might have more power, but it is reliable enough.  What was the matter with this bus, anyway, that made them decide to shelve her?”