ately, "I don't want him
to think I'm curious about what he bought that time he went to New
York. Perhaps it's a better aeroplane than we've got here; but I don't
believe it yet, after what she did for us in the tryout this day."

"Besides," observed Larry, "the chances are ten to one such a sly
fellow as our Percy ain't going to knock the crates around the many
parts of his machine into flinders right there in the open. He likes a
little bit of mystery too, even if he hasn't got any reason to hide
things."

"That settles my neat little scheme," sighed the runt, disconsolately.
"Don't understand why it is that everything I happen to propose, Larry
or somebody else always sits down on it, kerchunk! It's discouraging
to genius, I say, and might keep a budding inventor from ever attaining
his manifest destiny."

"Hear! hear!" chuckled Andy.

As for the tall boy, he came near having a fit, so doubled up with
laughter did this important remark on the part of his small chum leave
him.

"No danger of you ever being discouraged, or left at the stake,
Elephant," he managed to say, presently. "You come up smiling after
every backset. You've sure got grit, and to spare, if they did forget
you when handing out bone and muscle."

"And I bet you if I'd only had the chance, fellows, I'd have dropped
into the bally old lake, just like Andy did, and saved that sweet
cherub, Tommy Cragan!" declared the "Bug," as Larry often called his
diminutive chum, when he tired of using his other misplaced nickname.

"Sure you would," said Andy. "I was only lucky in having the chance,
that's all. Why, I don't see anything in that to make a fuss over. It
was just like a picnic to me. Frank wanted to go the worst kind, but
he couldn't let go the levers of our new and dandy machine, which might
sail away up in the clouds."

"Oh! how I envy both of you fellows!" sighed Elephant, placing a hand
on his breast, though Larry told him that his heart was probably
located on his right side, which would account for the flutter he fell
into whenever he thought he detected an opportunity for distinguishing
himself approaching.

But everybody took these sharp sayings of Larry Geohegan in the same
happy-go-lucky spirit in which they were uttered. No one had more
friends and fewer enemies than the tall boy; because he was generous to
a fault, humorous in his remarks, and the life of the camp when out
with any of his companions.

Andy had stalk