While Dr. Mays, who was a widower and childless, went to hunt up an old cap, as headgear for his novel journey, Roy obtained permission to use the doctor's telephone. He called up Jess's home and related briefly to Mrs. Bancroft what had occurred, and asked that an automobile be sent to the scene of the accident.
Mrs. Bancroft, who at first had been seriously alarmed, was reassured by Roy's quiet manner of breaking the news to her, and promised to come over herself at once. By this time Doctor Mays was ready, and the young people noted, not without amusement, that under his assumed air of confidence the benevolent old gentleman was not a little worried at the idea of braving what was to him a new element.
The Golden Butterfly was equipped with a small extension seat at the stern of her chassis, and into this Roy dropped after it had been pulled out. Dr. Mays was seated in the centre, as being the heaviest of the party, while Peggy resumed her place at the steering and driving apparatus.
"All ready behind?" she called out, laughingly, as they settled down.
"All right here, my dear," responded the doctor with an inward conviction that all was wrong.
"Go ahead, sis," cried Roy. "Hold tight, doctor, to those straps on the side."
With a roar and a whirring thunder of its exhausts the motor was started up. Dr. Mays paled, but, as Roy afterward expressed it, "he was dead game." Forward shot the aeroplane across the hitherto peaceful pasture lot which was now turned into a crazy circus of terrified animals.
The doctor asked the question rather jerkily as the aeroplane sped over the uneven ground, jolting, and jouncing tremendously despite its chilled-steel spiral springs.
"In a moment," explained Roy; "the extra weight makes her slower in rising than usual."
"Look out, child!" yelled the doctor, suddenly, "you'll crash into the fence."
"It's all right, doctor," he said reassuringly.
But to the physician it seemed far otherwise. The fence he had alluded to, a tall, five-barred, white-washed affair, loomed right up in front of them. It seemed as if the aeroplane, scudding over the ground like a scared jackrabbit, must crash into it.
As the 'plane neared the obstruction something seemed to impel it upward. Peggy pulled a lever and twisted a valve, and the motor, beating like a fevered pulse, answered with an angry roar.