“Looks like it,” the great authority opined. “I think we shall have to investigate the case.”

“Oh, will you? And you speak Italian so beautifully!”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it! It sounds so exactly like the hand-organ men!”

“Look here, Miss Blythe,” the poet protested, “you must not flatter a modest man like that. My daughter would say you were turning my head.”

“Oh, I rather think your daughter knows that it’s not the kind of head to 19 be turned,” Blythe answered easily. She was beginning to feel as if she had known this famous personage all her life.

19

“I shall tell her that,” said he.

Presently one-bell sounded a faint tinkle far below, and the big megaphone inquired whether they wanted to come down, and was assured that they did not. And all the while during their voyage through the air, which was prolonged for another half-hour, the two good comrades were weaving romances about the little girl; and with a curious confidence, as if, forsooth, they could conjure up what fortunes they would out of that vast horizon toward which the good ship was bearing them on.

At last the time came for them to go below, and they reluctantly signalled to the sailors, grouped about the deck in patient expectation. Upon which the windlass was set going, and slowly and creakingly the “crow’s nest” was lowered from its airy height.

The two aëronauts found the steerage still populous with queer figures, and the 20 atmosphere seemed more unsavoury than ever after their sojourn among the upper airs. To their disappointment, however, the woman and her Signorina were nowhere to be seen. Blythe and Mr. Grey looked for them in every corner of the deck, but no trace of them was to be found, and Blythe mounted the gangway to their own deck with much of the reluctance which she often felt in submitting to an interruption in a serial story.

20

They found Mrs. Halliday amusing herself with a glass of cracked ice, giving casual attention the while to a very long story told by a garrulous fellow-passenger in a wadded hood.

“Oh, Mamma,” Blythe cried, perching upon 

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