The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

PREPARATIONS AND PLANS.

"It will be another 'sky cruise,' longer and daintier and lovelier!" exclaimed Jess Bancroft, clapping her hands. "Peggy, you're nothing if not original."

"Well, there are automobile tours and sailing trips, and driving parties—" "And railroad journeys and mountain tramps—" interrupted Jess, laughing.

"Yes, and there are wonderful, long-distance migrations of birds, so why not a cross-country flight of motor butterflies?"

"It would be splendid fun," agreed Jess eagerly; "we could take the Golden Butterfly and the Red Dragon and——" "Don't forget that Bess Marshall has a small monoplane, too, now. I guess she would go in with us."

"Not a doubt of it. Let's go and find the boys and see what they say to it."

"No need to go after them, here they come now."

As the golden-haired Peggy spoke, two good-looking youths came round the corner of the old-fashioned house at Sandy Bay, Long Island, where the two young Prescotts made their home with their maiden aunt, Miss Sally Prescott. One of the lads was Roy Prescott, Peggy's brother, and the other was Jimsy Bancroft.

"Well, girls, what's up now?" inquired Roy, as both girls sprang to their feet, their faces flushed and eyes shining.

"Oh, nothing particular," rejoined Peggy, with assumed indifference, "except that we've just solved the problem of what to do with the rest of the summer."

"And what's that,—lie in hammocks and indulge in ice-cream sodas and chocolates?" asked Jimsy mockingly.

"No, indeed, you impertinent person; the young lady of the twentieth century has left all that far behind her," was Jess's Parthian shot, "for proof I refer you to our adventures on the Great Alkali."

"Hello! what's this?" asked Roy, holding up a dainty cardboard box, and giving vent to a mischievous smile.

"Chocolates!" cried Jimsy.

"It was chocolates," corrected Peggy reproachfully.

"And yet shall be," declared Jimsy, producing from some mysterious place in a long auto coat another box, beribboned and decorated like the first.

"Jimsy, you're an angel!" cried both girls at once.

"So I've been told before," responded the imperturbable Jimsy, "but I never really believed it till now."

Peggy rewarded him for the compliment by popping a chocolate into his mouth.

Gravely munching it, Jimsy proceeded to interrogation.

"And how did you solve the problem of what to do with the rest of the summer?" he asked.

For answer Peggy pointed to the sky, a delicate blue dome flecked with tiny cloudlets like cherub's wings.

"By circling way up yonder in the cloudfields," she laughed.

"But that's no novelty," objected Roy, "we've been up 5,000 feet already, and——" "But we're talking about a tour through cloudland," burst out Jess, unable to retain the secret any longer, "a sort of Cook's tour above the earth."

"Wow!" gasped both boys. "There's nothing slow," added Roy, "in that or about you two. And, incidentally, just read this letter I got this morning, or rather I'll read it for you."

So saying Roy produced from his coat a letter closely written in an old-fashioned handwriting....