to say apologetic.

She was quite sure now that any man who could turn out a daughter, not
yet sixteen, to behave in a fearful emergency as Pem had done--without
whom her own daughter would not be here to-day, as Una constantly kept
repeating--could never forge a gun, be it rocket or rifle, that would
hit no mark!

She even expressed some agitated interest in the great invention,
inquiring when the first experiments with the little model Thunder Bird,
upon a mountain-top, were to take place.

And as for her husband, he boldly declared himself deeply interested in
the conquest of the upper air and space--so far beyond the goal which
any aviator had dreamed of reaching yet.

He even went so far as to say that he would be glad to see the remainder
of a fortune, represented by that third section of a will, go for the
furtherance of the professor's wonderful moon-reaching, planet-reaching
scheme, instead of being "hung up" awaiting the return of the dead man's
younger brother who had been such a queer flimflam fellow in
youth,--whose family did not even know whether he was dead or alive.

And, at first, while the shell of that third nut was being solemnly
cracked by the reading of opening sentences of the will--oh! how the
heart of Pemrose jumped, like a nut on a hot shovel--it did seem as if
the kernel were going to be a rich one for the Thunder Bird.

For now, according to the testator's wish, if his brother, Treffrey
Graham, had not yet returned to claim his portion of his elder brother's
wealth, then the money--a little bonanza, indeed, a solid fortune--was
to be turned over, forthwith, to the University of his native city, to
be used for developments in the science of the air--the upper air and
what lay beyond it--chiefly for the furtherance of any inventions that
might be put forward by the dead man's trusted friend, Professor Lorry.

It was here that two pale girls, abruptly transformed from April
primroses to June roses--oh! such pinkly blooming tea-roses--gave
simultaneously a wild little shriek.

It was here that Pem, dazzled, saw the Thunder Bird, with a clear sky,
tear--tear away moonward--and noticed at the same time, through some
little loophole in the watch-tower of her excitement, the figure of a
man with a gray tourist's cap pulled down to his eyes, rather waveringly
crossing the street without.

He circled to avoid an April puddle,--she saw him clearly through the
broad library window, at a distan