as excited, Tom kept calm and lumpish, but
neither of them realised how their own lives were to be invaded by the
fruits of that beginning. "P'raps old Grubb'll mind the shop a bit now,"
he said, "and put his blessed model in the fire. Not that that can save
us, if we don't tide over with Steinhart's account."

Bert knew enough of things and the problem of aeronautics to realise
that this gigantic imitation of a bee would, to use his own idiom, "give
the newspapers fits." The next day it was clear the fits had been given
even as he said: their magazine pages were black with hasty photographs,
their prose was convulsive, they foamed at the headline. The next day
they were worse. Before the week was out they were not so much published
as carried screaming into the street.

The dominant fact in the uproar was the exceptional personality of Mr.
Butteridge, and the extraordinary terms he demanded for the secret of
his machine.

For it was a secret and he kept it secret in the most elaborate fashion.
He built his apparatus himself in the safe privacy of the great Crystal
Palace sheds, with the assistance of inattentive workmen, and the day
next following his flight he took it to pieces single handed, packed
certain portions, and then secured unintelligent assistance in packing
and dispersing the rest. Sealed packing-cases went north and east and
west to various pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiar
care. It became evident these precautions were not inadvisable in view
of the violent demand for any sort of photograph or impressions of
his machine. But Mr. Butteridge, having once made his demonstration,
intended to keep his secret safe from any further risk of leakage. He
faced the British public now with the question whether they wanted his
secret or not; he was, he said perpetually, an "Imperial Englishman,"
and his first wish and his last was to see his invention the privilege
and monopoly of the Empire. Only--

It was there the difficulty began.

Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man singularly free from any
false modesty--indeed, from any modesty of any kind--singularly willing
to see interviewers, answer questions upon any topic except aeronautics,
volunteer opinions, criticisms, and autobiography, supply portraits and
photographs of himself, and generally spread his personality across
the terrestrial sky. The published portraits insisted primarily upon an
immense black moustache, and seconda