ere's kids and women, I'd
be willing to call it a day!"

"B-but that's dangerous, Johnny! You--you'd be killed, and--and it's so
much finer to go on living and doing a little good right along every day.
It would count up more--in the long run. And we're neutral. I--I don't
think you ought to!"

"Why not? That's the biggest thing the world has ever seen or will see.
The men that are in it--look what they're doing! It's tremendous, Mary V!
It would be hitting a wallop for civilization."

"It would be getting yourself killed! And then what? What good is
civilization to you after you're all smashed to pieces? You--you wouldn't
be a drop in the bucket, Johnny Jewel! If it was our war--but to go and
butt in on something away over there is absolutely foolish. What if you
got one? You couldn't get them all, and there'd be a dozen to take its
place.

"But that's the way it goes. You get a streak of perfectly unbelievable
good luck, and have an aeroplane just practically drop into your hands,
and then you spoil it all by wanting to do some crazy thing that is
absolutely idiotic. I should think you'd be contented with what you've
got; but no, you must take your aeroplane right straight over to Europe
and let the Germans smash it all to pieces and kill you and everything.
Why, I never _heard_ of anything so absolutely imbecile as that!"

"Well, I haven't gone yet," Johnny reminded her. "Maybe the thing won't
fly at all, and maybe I'll break my neck learning to run it. So it's
kinda early in the day to get excited about my going to France."

"The idea! I'm not a bit excited. It really doesn't concern me at all,
personally, whether you go or not. But it does look to me like a terribly
silly idea. Any person with fair reasoning faculties would argue against
such idiocy, just as a matter of--of--"

"Of course. Let it ride that way. Would you think, just to look along
this ledge, Mary V, that a real military tractor was cached away in it?
Talk about luck! You wait till you see the place I've got for it."

Mary V seemed unimpressed. "If I might venture to advise you on a subject
that has no personal interest for me," she countered primly, "I would
suggest that you hide most of that gas in one of these niches, and take
only one can at a time to wherever your aeroplane is. I tell you, Bland
Halliday is _not_ to be trusted. You say he was broke and had lost his
machine in a wreck or something, and was beating his way to the Coast.