omewhat more enthusiastic than comports with her usual dignity and
well-known icy reserve--ahem!"

"Good gracious, sis!" exclaimed the boy, as he scanned the news-sheet,
"why this is just what we were wishing for, isn't it? It's our chance if
we can only grasp it and make good."

"We can! We will!" exclaimed Peggy, striking an attitude and holding one
hand above her glossy head. "Read it out, Roy, so that Monsieur Bleriot
can hear it."

M. Bleriot, a French bull-dog, who had dignifiedly followed Peggy's mad
career down the path, gazed up appreciatively, as Roy read out:

"Big Chance for Sky Boys!

"Ironmaster Higgins of Acatonick Offers Ten Thousand Dollars
In Prizes for Flights and Planes."

"Ten thousand dollars, just think!" cried Peggy, clasping her hands one
minute and the next stooping to caress M. Bleriot. "Oh, Roy! Do you think
we could?"

"Could what? you indefinite person?" parried Roy, although his eyes were
dancing and he knew well enough what his vivacious sister was driving at.

"Could win that ten thousand dollars, of course, you goose."

Roy laughed.

"It's not all offered in a lump sum," he rejoined. "Listen; there is a
first prize of five thousand dollars for the boy under eighteen who makes
the longest sustained flight in a plane of his own construction--with the
exception of the engine, that is; and here's another of two thousand five
hundred dollars to the glider making the best and longest sustained
flight, and another of one thousand five hundred to the boy flying the
most carefully constructed machine and the one bearing the most ingenious
devices for perfecting the art of flying and--and--oh listen, Peggy!"

"I am--oh, I am!" breathed Peggy with half assumed breathlessness.

"There's a prize offered for girls!"

"No!"

"Yes. Now don't say any more that girls are downtrodden and neglected by
the bright minds of the day. Here it is, all in black and white, a prize
of a whole thousand to the young lady who makes a successful flight.
There, what do you think of that?"

"That Mr. Higgins is a mean old thing," pouted Peggy, "five thousand
dollars to the successful boy and only one thousand to the successful
girl. It's discrimination, that's what it is. Don't you read every day in
the papers about girls and women making almost as good flights as the
men? Didn't a--a Mademoiselle somebody-or-other make a flight round the
bell tower at Bruges the other da