CHAPTER VI
A HOTSPUR
"Oh! I'm so glad--just so glad I don't know what to do with myself--thatthose experiments with the lesser Thunder Bird, the smaller sky-rocket,which won't make the four-day trip to Mammy Moon, but will only fly up acouple of hundred miles, or so, and drop its golden egg, the diary, totell you where that blank No Man's Land of space begins will still becarried out this spring from the top of old Mount Greylock. If they hadbeen given up, it would have broken my heart--so it would!"
It was evening now, late evening, in the dining room of the professor'shome, looking upon the green University campus.
The girl with the grafted Rose in her name, grafted on to a foreignstem, was pouring out her father's after dinner coffee--and her own fullheart, at the same time. "Ouch!" She shivered a little. "I don't like tothink of that 'diddering' cold of empty space; not--not since thetrain-wreck. I'm like the big boy who saved us then, and was so jolly;I'm out for excitement if I'm warm enough to enjoy it, eh?"
"Humph! Well, here's somebody who's willing to take a chance on carryinghis warmth, his fun too, with him into space."
The professor laughed as he drew a sheet of thick letter paper, broadand creamy, from his pocket.
"Oh! is it somebody else ... you don't mean to say it's another hotspurapplying for a passage in the real Thunder Bird when you start the bigrocket off for the moon, eh?"
The girl glanced over her father's shoulder.
"Yes, one more candidate for lunar honors! And this one is the limit fora Quixote. Young, too, I should say!" Again Toandoah's deep chant oflaughter buoyed his daughter's treble note, as he began to read:
"Professor G. Noel Lorry, Nevil University. My dear Sir,
Having learned that you are perfecting an apparatus that will reach any height--even go as far as the moon--and that it will be capable of carrying a passenger, I should like to volunteer for the trip.
I have always wanted to say 'Hullo!' to the Man in the Moon, on whose face I have often looked from an aeroplane already; and I am ready to try anything once--even if it should be once for all!
Yours for the big chance, T. S.
P. S. I respectfully apologize for not being able just at present to give my full name, but will, with your permission, furnish it later."
"Humph! Mr. T. S.! 'With your permission,' where do you write from?"Pemrose bent low over the primrose sheet. "Oh! from Lightwood. Now,--nowwhere is that, Daddy?"
"There's a little, one-horse village of the name among the BerkshireMountains, not far from fashionable Lenox." Her father smiled.
"Lenox! How lovely! Why! that's where you and I are going to stay--stayfor a week or two--isn't it, father, _en route_ for Greylock andthe experiments. You know the Grosvenors have invited us--and they havea wonderful old place up there. Una's mother is carrying coals thesedays--" Pemrose winked--"coals of penitence in her heart for ever havingsneered at your invention, Daddy."
"Hot ones, are they? Well! I wish she'd hasten and spill them out beforeshe reaches Lenox." The inventor chuckled. "Let me see, she was bornthere, I believe, at their mountain home--yes, and one or other of herbrothers, too."
"Ho! Was it--was it the unicorn; I--I mean the oddity; the ThunderBird's rival for all-l that money?" The girlish hand shook now as itwielded the coffee-pot. "Oh, dear! wouldn't his horn be exalted if henever came back?" With a droll little catch of the breath. "Una and Iare as friendly as ever now, Dad," ran on the girlish voice, hurriedlyleading off from the neighborhood of the will. "And she's to be takenout of school early, when we go, because she has been so nervous sincethe train-wreck. So chummy we are--oh, as chummy as in the old days whenwe measured eyelashes and she laughed at my 'chowchow' name!" Thespeaker here shot the bluest of glances through those twinkling lashesat their reflection in a neighboring teapot, older than Columbiaherself.
"Chowchow, indeed! It just suits you, that compound. There's a vain elfin you somewhere, Pem, that sleeps in the shadow of the Wise Woman."
"Maybe--maybe, there's a nickum! That's Andrew's word, Andrew's word foran imp, a tomboy. He's the Grosvenors' Scotch chauffeur, you know, whotalks with a thistle under his tongue. Well! nickum, or not!" the girlwas a rosy weathercock again. "I--I'm just dying to get up to themountains, to climb the Pinnacle, the green Pinnacle, that rough,pine-clad hill, with Una--and sit in the Devil's Chair!"
"_What!_ My Wise Woman sitting in the Devil's Chair! Why! 'twouldtake a daredevil nickum, indeed, to do that."
The inventor threw up his hands, laughing again, as he beat a retreat tohis hardware den, his laboratory, where there was ever a magnet, potentby night or day, to draw him back.
Yet when still another six weeks had passed and Pemrose, with all thegreen world of spring in her heart, stood, breathless, upon that Lenoxpinnacle--a pine-clad mountainette some thirteen hundred feet abovesea-level--lo and behold! there was a nickum sitting coolly in theDevil's Chair.
A brazen feat it was! For that Lucifer's throne was a curved stone seat,a natural armchair, rudely carved out of the precipice rock, more than adozen sheer feet beneath the crest where she stood with Una--Andrew ofthe thistly tongue having driven the two girls up to the foot of thepeak on this the third day after their arrival, with the May flies, amidthe mountains.
"A nickum--oh! a nickum, indeed--a daredevil nickum--sitting in theDevil's Armchair, with his feet dangling down--down over the deepprecipice! Look!"
Pemrose pirouetted in excitement at the sight.
"Yes, and, goodness! he seems to be enjoying it, too. Not turning ahair. Oh! if 'twere I--I should be so-o dizzy."
With the more timid cry in her pulsing throat, and that little appalledstand, a star of mingled consternation and admiration beaming,bewitched, in one dark eye, Una turned from the spectacle--turned,shuddering, from the hundred-and-odd feet of unbroken abyss extendingfrom the nickum's knickerbockered legs, nonchalantly swinging, to anawed grove of young pine trees, rock-ribbed and bowlder-strewn, farbelow.
"Oh! I don't want to look at him," she cried cravenly. "How willhe--ever--climb back up here again?"
"Tr-rust him--" began Toandoah's daughter, then suddenly clutched herthroat, her widening eyes as round, as bright, as staringly blue as themountain lupine already opening upon the world's surprises, in sunnyspots, among the hills.
Those eyes were now fastened to the back of the nickum's close-croppedhead, to his broad shoulders in a rough, gray sweater, noting a certain"bully" shrug of those shoulders at the surrounding landscape, as if,monarch of all he surveyed, he yet felt himself a usurper in his presentseat.
"Something rotten--something rotten in the State of Denmark!" crowedPemrose softly. "I wonder if he's getting that off now? Una! Una! It'sHe ... He!"
"Who? Who?"
"The man--the boy--who saved us after the train-wreck ... without whomwe mightn't be here--now! Ah-h!" was the softly tremulous answer, as theblue eyes danced down the rock, with frankest recognition, friendliestexpectation, to that daring, nonchalant nickum figure, now coollydrawing up its toes for a climb.