ul in his finger-tips, from
its cone-shaped steel head to its steering compartment, thence to the
supply chamber with all the little propelling rockets in it, down to its
complicated nozzle, or tail.

"Why--why! there's no knowing what you and I may be doing yet, when we
strain our wits to cracking, is there, Daddy-man?" she exulted further.
"You say, yourself, that once space is conquered, that horribly cold old
zero space outside the earth's atmosphere, anything devised that will
move through it, as our Thunder Bird can do, then--then there's no
limit! We might be shooting a passenger off to the moon now, provided
the Man in the Moon would shoot him back," gayly, "if only the master
sky-rocket, twelve times as large as this little model you're working on
for experiments, were ready. The re-al moon-going Thunder Bird! Oh,
dear!" Her little fingers restlessly intertwined. "How--how I can
har-rdly wait to throw the switch upon a mountaintop and--watch it
_tear_, as the college boys say!"

"Sometimes--sometimes I'm inclined to think it will never 'tear'; that
another than I will be the first to reach the heavenly bodies." Toandoah
sighed. "For where are the funds coming from, Pem, the little
bonanza--fairy gold-mine--necessary to gorge our Thunder Bird for its
record flight--fit it out for its novel migration to the moon, eh?" The
inventor clasped his hands behind his head, whistling ruefully. "Funds,
child! Already, it has pecked through the biggest slice of mine!"

"Ah! but--ah! but--" the girl suddenly flashed upon him a sky-blue
wink--"ah! but the third _nut_ hasn't been cracked yet, remember,
for the Bird to peck at that. Isn't it in four weeks from now--oh! in
five--" the slight figure swaying like the blue-eyed grass upon its tall
green stem, blown by a wild breeze--"in five weeks from now that the
third drawer will be opened, containing the third and last installment
of Mr. Hartley Graham's queer, queer drawn-out will. When it is--oh!
when it is--maybe, then, at last, there will be something coming to the
University, our University, to benefit your inventions, Daddy."

"My child! when that third nut is cracked, 'twill only benefit a 'nut'."
The man chuckled drily now. "In other words, the remainder of Friend
Hartley's fortune, all that his sister, Mrs. Grosvenor, hasn't already
got, will still be held in trust by me, as executor of the will,
for--for that griffin of a younger brother of his who cleared out over