l thing to see an
occasional hovering plane that summer. Susan was always intensely
excited. Who knew but that it might be Shirley away up there in the
clouds, flying over to the Island from Kingsport? But Shirley had gone
overseas now, so Susan was not so keenly interested in this particular
aeroplane and its pilot. Nevertheless, she looked at it with awe.

"I wonder, Mrs. Dr. dear," she said solemnly, "what the old folks down
there in the graveyard would think if they could rise out of their
graves for one moment and behold that sight. I am sure my father would
disapprove of it, for he was a man who did not believe in new-fangled
ideas of any sort. He always cut his grain with a reaping hook to the
day of his death. A mower he would not have. What was good enough for
his father was good enough for him, he used to say. I hope it is not
unfilial to say that I think he was wrong in that point of view, but I
am not sure I go so far as to approve of aeroplanes, though they may be
a military necessity. If the Almighty had meant us to fly he would have
provided us with wings. Since He did not it is plain He meant us to
stick to the solid earth. At any rate, you will never see me, Mrs. Dr.
dear, cavorting through the sky in an aeroplane."

"But you won't refuse to cavort a bit in father's new automobile when
it comes, will you, Susan?" teased Rilla.

"I do not expect to trust my old bones in automobiles, either,"
retorted Susan. "But I do not look upon them as some narrow-minded
people do. Whiskers-on-the-moon says the Government should be turned
out of office for permitting them to run on the Island at all. He foams
at the mouth, they tell me, when he sees one. The other day he saw one
coming along that narrow side-road by his wheatfield, and Whiskers
bounded over the fence and stood right in the middle of the road, with
his pitchfork. The man in the machine was an agent of some kind, and
Whiskers hates agents as much as he hates automobiles. He made the car
come to a halt, because there was not room to pass him on either side,
and the agent could not actually run over him. Then he raised his
pitchfork and shouted, 'Get out of this with your devil-machine or I
will run this pitchfork clean through you.' And Mrs. Dr. dear, if you
will believe me, that poor agent had to back his car clean out to the
Lowbridge road, nearly a mile, Whiskers following him every step,
shaking his pitchfork and bellowing insults. Now, Mrs. Dr. de