s to all the love of romance and adventure in their hearts, I'm
sure. They would do anything to win it for themselves. I would myself if
I were a man, and didn't know her; so when Captain March took us into
his hangar, and she turned on the look, I didn't blame him for
forgetting the very existence of his small pal. It only made me sad.

"I thought I'd better take the _Golden Eagle_ up for a short run, and
test her before you came, to see that she was all right," he was still
apologizing. "Then she behaved so well, I got going, and stayed up
longer than I meant. But I saw the car stop, so I hurried down."

"I should think you did 'hurry down!'" laughed Diana. "The way you aimed
at your hangar from far up in the sky, and shot in, was like a marksman
aiming at the bull's-eye on a target, and getting it. What do you call
'testing' your monoplane? What had you been doing to make all those
people applaud?"

"Oh, only a little upside-down flying," said Captain March, as he might
have said "only a little breathing exercise." "You see, I make stability
tests. That's what I'm _for_. And with my appliances, being upside
down's no more to me than it is to a fly when he walks on the ceiling."

Di's eyes said, "You hero! you splendid, modest hero!"--said it so
plainly that the hero faintly blushed, though it was hard to trace a
blush on his face, burnt red-brown by sun and wind. My eyes said nothing
at all, but if they had recited a whole page of Shakespeare's sonnets he
would have been none the wiser.

He led us into the hangar, where two fascinatingly smudged mechanics
were in attendance on the magic bird; and he remembered to be nice and
respectful to Father. Explanations of the mechanism were ostensibly
addressed to our parent, but in reality all the eloquence was for Di,
whose eyes poured forth appreciative intelligence as stars pour forth
rays. Captain March couldn't be expected to know, poor fellow, that Di,
if obliged to choose between two deadly dull evils, would rather hear a
cook tell how to boil potatoes than listen to any mechanical talk.
However, it wasn't really needful to listen, if one's eyes were well
trained; and Di was having the "time of her life" in meeting an airman.

Even I could see that this monoplane, fitted with Captain March's
inventions, was a different looking creature from the other bird
machines which were shooting up into the air, or darting back into their
dens, all around us. The _Golden Eagl