t it should.

"Well, since that is the way you feel toward me, I may as well drift,"
he made belated retort in a tone of suppressed wrath. "I guess it
would have been better if I'd stayed away, I'll remember--"

"For gracious _sake_, what does make you so horrid?" Mary V now had
one arm crooked around his neck, which he stiffened stubbornly. With
her other hand she was tweaking his ears rather painfully. "You're
going to stay right here and behave yourself till dad comes, and you're
going to have a talk with him about your affairs before you go doing
anything silly. You know perfectly well that my father's advice is
worth something. Everybody in the country thinks he has a wonderful
brain when it comes to business or anything like that. He can tell you
what you ought to do, Johnny, if you'll only be sensible and listen to
him."

"What do I want to listen to him for?" Johnny's eyes looked down at
her with no softening of his anger. "Good golly! Do you think your
dad's got the only brain in the world? How do men run their affairs,
and get rich, that never heard of him, do you suppose? I don't want to
mock your dad--he's all right in his own field, and a smart man and all
that. But he don't know the flying game, and his advice wouldn't be
worth the breath he'd use giving it. Perhaps I am conceited and
swell-headed and a few other things, but I am perfectly willing to take
a chance on my own judgment for awhile yet, anyway. When I do need
advice, I'll know where to go."

"To Bland Halliday, I suppose!" Mary V took away her arm and stood
back from him. "You'd take a tramp's advice before you would my
father's, would you?" She pressed her lips together, seeming to hold
back with difficulty a storm of reproaches.

"I would, where flying is concerned." Johnny's lips spelled anger to
match her own. "He knows the game, and your father doesn't. And just
because Bland's playing hard luck is no reason why you need call him
names. Give the devil his due, anyway."

"I just perfectly ache to do it!" cried Mary V. "He wouldn't be
talking you into all kinds of crazy things--"

"Crazy because they don't happen to appeal to you," Johnny flung back.
"Oh, well, what's the use of talking? You don't seem to get the right
angle on things, is all." He busied himself with a cigarette, his
face, that had been so boyishly eager while he told her his plan, gone
gloomy with the self-pity of one who feels himself misund