does not string people, Sammy. If she says the pony is pink,
it is pink, you may be certain sure."

"And chocolate and cream color, too?" sniffed the boy. "Hum! I guess a
pony as funny as that would be, could fly too. So you'll be fixed up all
right, Tess Kenway."

"Dear me," sighed the little girl, coming back to their original topic
of conversation. "I wish we _did_ have something that would fly."

Now, secretly, Sammy was very fond of Tess. When he had had the scarlet
fever that spring and early summer, his little neighbor with the serious
face and dreamy look had been the most attentive friend one could ever
expect to have.

She had called morning and night at his house to get the "bulletin" of
his condition; and when he was up again and the house was what Dot
Kenway had mentioned as "fumigrated," Tess had spent long hours amusing
the boy until he could play out of doors again.

Besides, she had much to do with his accompanying the Corner House girls
on their recent motoring trip, and Sammy's own mother said that that
vacation journey had "made a new boy of Sammy."

This new boy, therefore, did not scorn to put his mind to the problem of
Tess Kenway's distress. But an airship!

"I say, Tess," he said at last with some eagerness, "how'd one of them
airmajigs be that father brought me home from the city once--only a
bigger one?"

"What is an airmajig?" demanded Tess, her curiosity aroused if nothing
more.

"Well, it's a dinky thing--pshaw! you remember. You stretched a wire,
and then wound it up--"

"Wound up the wire?"

"Naw! Oh, jingo! The ship, I mean. It was run by a clock. And you hung
it on the wire when it was wound."

"The clock?" asked Tess, still absent-mindedly.

"Oh! Je-ru-sa-_lem_! Girls don't know nothin' about mechanics," snarled
Sammy. "What's the use!"

Tess asked in an apologetic voice, after a moment of silence:

"What happened, Sammy?"

"What happened to _what_?"

"The airmajig?"

"Why, it traveled right along the wire--hanging to it, you know,"
explained the little boy with more enthusiasm. "It would go as far as
the wire was long. Why, I bet, Tess Kenway, that it would run from your
house to mine. And it wiggled its wings just like a bird. And there was
a tin man in it. But pshaw! that was just for kids. It was a toy. But a
bigger one--"

"Oh, Sammy! big enough to carry us?" gasped Tess, clasping her hands.

"Er--well--now," hesitated Sammy, whose own imagination was ha