Thunder Bird, the smaller sky-rocket,
which won't make the four-day trip to Mammy Moon, but will only fly up a
couple of hundred miles, or so, and drop its golden egg, the diary, to
tell you where that blank No Man's Land of space begins will still be
carried out this spring from the top of old Mount Greylock. If they had
been given up, it would have broken my heart--so it would!"

It was evening now, late evening, in the dining room of the professor's
home, looking upon the green University campus.

The girl with the grafted Rose in her name, grafted on to a foreign
stem, was pouring out her father's after dinner coffee--and her own full
heart, at the same time. "Ouch!" She shivered a little. "I don't like to
think of that 'diddering' cold of empty space; not--not since the
train-wreck. I'm like the big boy who saved us then, and was so jolly;
I'm out for excitement if I'm warm enough to enjoy it, eh?"

"Humph! Well, here's somebody who's willing to take a chance on carrying
his warmth, his fun too, with him into space."

The professor laughed as he drew a sheet of thick letter paper, broad
and creamy, from his pocket.

"Oh! is it somebody else ... you don't mean to say it's another hotspur
applying for a passage in the real Thunder Bird when you start the big
rocket off for the moon, eh?"

The girl glanced over her father's shoulder.

"Yes, one more candidate for lunar honors! And this one is the limit for
a Quixote. Young, too, I should say!" Again Toandoah's deep chant of
laughter buoyed his daughter's treble note, as he began to read:

"Professor G. Noel Lorry,
Nevil University.
My dear Sir,

Having learned that you are perfecting an apparatus that will reach
any height--even go as far as the moon--and that it will be capable of
carrying a passenger, I should like to volunteer for the trip.

I have always wanted to say 'Hullo!' to the Man in the Moon, on whose
face I have often looked from an aeroplane already; and I am ready to
try anything once--even if it should be once for all!

Yours for the big chance,
T. S.

P. S. I respectfully apologize for not being able just at present to
give my full name, but will, with your permission, furnish it later."

"Humph! Mr. T. S.! 'With your permission,' where do you write from?"
Pemrose bent low over the primrose sheet. "Oh! from