house on my way here,” Dick answered. “He was doing something to his plane and said he’d be right over. We can wait. I’ve got to fix my rudder a little.”

5 “And I think I’ll take off one of my rubber bands and put on another,” Teddy remarked. “One of ’em looks a little bit frayed. I don’t want my plane to slow up.”

5

“You want it to go all the way to the woods, I suppose,” laughed Dick.

“Oh, it’ll go there. Maybe yours will, too,” said Teddy. “The wind is getting stronger,” he added. Again he wet his finger and held it up as a test. “It’s going to be a strong tail wind,” he went on. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all three of our planes got to the edge of the woods, anyhow.”

“You have a pretty good opinion of our planes,” chuckled Dick.

“Why not?” Teddy asked as he let his propeller slowly unwind. He wanted to take the tension off the rubber bands in order to insert a new one.

Dick did not answer his chum. But he looked up long enough to say: “Here comes Joe!”

“Good!” exclaimed Teddy. “Now we can6 have the race. Hurry, Joe!” he shouted. “The wind’s just right and it’s getting stronger. Hurry!”

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“Coming!” answered Joe Denton.

The three chums were soon busy making final adjustments to their toy planes in the yard of Teddy Benson’s home. Most of the activities of the three centered around Teddy’s home. He was the leader of his crowd, always the first to propose something new. He had done it when he suggested they have a race of their model planes. The boys had been making model planes for some time.

At first they made only small ones, which were launched by being tossed into the air. These planes went only a short distance.

The next planes the boys made had rubber bands for motors. At first, they attached only a few, small rubbers to the propeller of their craft. These bands, when twisted, would unravel, whirl the propeller and send the planes flying.

Step by step the three chums had advanced7 until they now had planes with quite powerful rubber “motors,” if such they could be called. The “motors” of course, were just rubber bands or cords.

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