“Yes,” Teddy agreed, “if we start on the far side—away from the woods. Can’t start in the middle of the meadow.”

“Why not?” asked Dick.

He did not glance up at his chum. Dick, who was short and rather stout, was twisting the propeller blades of his own toy plane. He was winding the rubber bands which, when they untwisted, would serve as the motor of the little craft. “Why can’t we begin the race in the middle of the meadow, Teddy? That’s the clearest place.”

“Well, if you want your plane to shoot over in the woods, and maybe get lost, let it3 go from the middle of Mason’s meadow,” said Teddy. He tested the rudders of his craft.

3

Dick, who had put the clamp on his rubber engine, looked up to laugh as he said:

“Say, Teddy, you don’t think, that these planes of ours will fly from the middle of Mason’s meadow away over to the woods on the far side, do you?”

“I don’t know about your plane, but mine will,” stated Teddy confidently. “I’m not so sure,” he went on, as he carefully tested the tautness of the stretched rubber bands, “I’m not so sure but what we had better go down to the lake beach. There’s a longer stretch to fly from down there. But of course the wind is wrong. The planes would have to go over the water.”

“And since mine doesn’t happen to be a hydroplane, I’m not for that,” declared Dick. “But you make me laugh when you say your plane will go all the way across Mason’s meadow and into the woods.”

4 “I don’t want my plane to go into the woods,” spoke Teddy calmly. “But I’m pretty sure it will if I let it have all the power I can give it. I didn’t wind it up as tight as I could.”

4

“Well, if your plane is as good as you think it is, why don’t you enter it in the races for the Johnson cup?” asked Dick.

“Maybe I will,” Teddy answered as he made another adjustment to his craft’s rudders.

“Say, don’t you know that only the very best planes go in that contest this September?” asked Dick. “Your little one wouldn’t have a chance!”

“Maybe it would,” spoke Teddy. “We’ll know more after we have our own little race today down in Mason’s meadow. Did you see anything of Joe?”

“I passed his 

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