be looking
for you? I hate to say it, Johnny, but it does look as though you
didn't care one bit about me or what I'd think, or anything. You've
just gone crazy on the subject of flying, and that Bland Halliday is
just working you, Johnny, for an easy mark. You think it's pride
that's holding you back from taking dad's offer and staying here and
settling down. But it isn't that at all, Johnny. It's just plain
conceit and swell-headedness, and I hate to tell you this, but it's the
truth.

"That airplane has simply gone to your head and you can't look at
anything sensibly any more. If you could, you'd have _kicked_ that
miserable Bland Halliday when he came sneaking around--wanting money
and a square meal, and you needn't deny it, Johnny. But no, instead of
taking the chance that's given you to make good, you turn up your nose
at it because it isn't spectacular enough to keep you in the limelight
as the original Boy Wonder! And you--you take that crook, that tramp,
that--that _bum_ as a partner, and imagine you're going to do wonderful
things and get rich and everything! And you won't do anything except
give that tramp a chance to steal you blind!"

"I didn't say I'd taken Bland as a partner. But I may do it, at
that--if my judgment approves of the deal."

"Your judgment! Johnny Jewel, you haven't got any more judgment than a
cat!"

This was putting it rather strongly, since Mary V had fully intended to
guard her tongue, being careful not to antagonize him. That heady
young man now stood glaring at her in a thoroughly antagonistic manner.
Speech trembled on his lips that would not formulate the scathing
rebuke surging within his mind. He had been called conceited,
swell-headed, inconsiderate of others, and now this final insult was
heaped upon the full measure of his wrongs, just when he had a clear
vision of future achievements that should have dazzled any young woman
whose life was to be linked with his. But Mary V, he reminded himself,
could not look beyond her own little desires and whims. Because she
had tried to lay down the law for him and he had failed to obey, she
refused to see that he was playing for big stakes and that he could not
be expected to throw everything up just because she had been worried
over him for a couple of days. The mere fact that he had not been lost
on the desert, as every one supposed he was, could not affect his plans
for the future, though Mary V seemed to think tha