No knowing! The Pinnacle, the green Pinnacle, towered until it seemed very near to her with the mounting pride in one girl's breast.
"Toandoah, the inventor, is my father--oh! Professor Lorry, I mean. The Thunder Bird--the record-breaking Thunder Bird--is his invention. I call it that; an ordinary rocket he says it is."
Well! the sky was in Pem's eyes, of a truth, now, enough blue to make a Blue Peter, the flag of embarking, the flag of adventure; no rudeness of "nickum", earthbound, boastful, could ever humiliate her again, with Toandoah's emblem in her heart.
Yet, as she felt the Guardian's saluting kiss upon her young forehead, so starred by fate, as she was introduced, one by one, to her sisters of the White Birch Group and was invited, she the center of a flattering fuss, to sit with them by a Pinnacle blaze, instead of being at the pleasant pains to build her own fire, her thoughts would turn back--turn back every now and again, to Jack at a Pinch!
To the quick-witted, surefooted youth, so daring, if so unmannerly--such a chuff--who had not even waited to make the rope fast around his own body before sliding down the rock to the Devil's Chair a second time--and who had, a second time too, climbed, unaided.
But she said nothing of him--or of her recent escapade.
Instead, she bathed every sore spot left by the experience in the glory of telling her new friends all that she might tell of the romantic, space-conquering Thunder Bird, while, above, the Man in the Moon, eavesdropping, learned of the surprise in store for him.
Perhaps he cribbed some hint, too, from the excited girlish tongue of the demonstration so soon to take place upon Mount Greylock, when the invention would be tried out; and lastly of the thrilling invitation to the White Birch Group to be present--not then--but on that Great Day, far ahead, when the real Thunder Bird, full-fledged with magic, red-eyed, fiery-tailed, would embark on its hundred-hour flight moonward, as Pem was sure it would start, no matter where the gold-mine to equip it came from.
"Well! we seem, truly--truly--to be treading the 'margin of moonshine land', don't we?" said the Guardian dreamily, enchantment in her voice. "I--almost--feel as if, some day, we might be inviting the Man in the Moon to supper with us here on the Pinnacle, to shoot himself back in the small hours. Joking apart, it does draw the Universe very near together, doesn't it--open the road to such wonderful possibilities!"
