ou mean to say you're goin' in for any such foolishness
as that?"

"'Tain't 'foolish!"

"'Tis so! And--and are you--are you goin' to go up in one of them
things--them airships?"

"Well, I reckon I might. It's my machine, and I'm not going to let
them aviary fellers monkey too much with it unless I'm on board. They
might bust something, and want me to pay for it. Yes, I reckon I'll do
some flying myself."

"Ezra Larabee!" cried his horror-stricken wife. "Be you plumb crazy?"

"I hope not, Samantha."

"But goin' up in an airship! Why it's flyin' in the face of
Providence!"

"Well, it'll be flying in the air, at the same time," he chuckled.
Clearly this was a different Uncle Ezra than his wife had ever known.
She sighed.

"The idea!" Aunt Samantha murmured. "Goin' up in an airship. You'll
fall and be killed, as sure as fate."

"That's what I was afraid of first," said Uncle Ezra, "and I didn't
want to go into the scheme. But this young feller, Lieutenant Larson,
he proved to me different. They can't fall. If your engine stops all
you got to do is to come down like a feather. He used some funny word,
but I can't think of it now. But it's safe--it's safer than farming,
he claims. Most any time on a farm a bull may gore you, or a threshing
engine blow up. But there's nothing like that in an airship.

"Besides, think of the twenty thousand dollars I'm going to get," he
added as a final argument.

"You're not sure of it," objected his wife.

"Oh, yes I be!" he boasted. "Then I'm going into the airship business.
Well, now I've told you, I'm going to sleep again."

"As if anyone could sleep after hearin' such news," she sighed. "I
jest know suthin' will happen! And think what everybody will say about
you! They'll say you're crazy!"

"Let 'em!" he replied, tranquilly. "They won't say so when I get that
twenty thousand dollars!"

"But can't you get the money any easier way?" she wanted to know.

"How, I'd like to know? All I got to do to get this, is to get an
airship to fly from New York to San Francisco."

"Why Ezra Larabee!" she exclaimed. "Now I'm sure you're not right in
your head. You'll have the doctor in the mornin'."

"Oh, no, I won't!" he declared. "Don't catch me wasting any money on
doctors. I'm all right."

How Aunt Samantha managed to get to sleep again she never knew. But she
did, though her rest was marred by visions of airships and balloons
turning upside down and sp