in such a good act."

"Always invest heavily in hope, Pen. It is free to all, and you come out
ahead because you get your dividends in anticipating anyway, and you know
anticipation--"

"Hold on, Larry, don't be a bromide!"

"Everyone is a bromide now. Sulphides are all in the asylums. I am hoping
for a chance to win the _medal militaire_--I mean for the chance to do
something worth getting one."

Pen's pleasure in her surreptitious expedition, the delight in shopping
and the excitement of meeting some one from her former life had brought a
most vivid beauty to her delicate face, and Larry looked at her with an
approval that brought forth a sudden wonder.

"Say, Pen!" he exclaimed excitedly, "you haven't got a man up there at
your ranch, have you?"

"Certainly; two of them," she replied assuredly.

"That's all right. So long as there are two, it's nothing serious. Safety
in numbers, remember."

After dinner they motored out to the field where the exhibition was to be
given. A coatless, tanned, weather-beaten crowd had already gathered.

Pen stood apart from the spectators, watching Larry whirl, turn turtle,
and perform all the aviation agonies so fascinating to the untutored. When
he shut off the engine and swung down, skimming the ground for a way and
stopping gently, she was in waiting nearby.

"I loathe this kind of exhibition work!" he declared. "It's silly stuff,
but it's what the public wants. Sure you don't want to try a little
straight flight?" he tempted.

"N--o, Larry. Vice versa for mine, as the Irishman said."

"All right. Here, Meder!" he said to the mechanic, who had come up. "Take
care of the flier. I'll see you later at the hotel."

"It was wonderful, Larry," said Pen as they were motoring to town. "I seem
to see you from such a new angle now. I have always thought of you as a
lovable, happy-go-lucky boy, but when I saw you take the air, I knew you
had come to be something far different. You have the hawk-sense of
balance, the sixth sense--the sense woman was supposed to have a monopoly
of till the day of aeroplanes arrived. You had nerve to go up there and
yet you were not nervous."

"A fellow has to be without nerve and yet nervy," explained Larry. "If he
loses his sense of equilibrium up there, it's all off; yet he has to be
always ready to take a chance and to find one."

"And, Larry--when you fly to the colors--"

"To the tricolors," he interrupted.

"It will bring out the bigge