The Panchronicon Part 18

"Might's well, I guess."

He proceeded to the engine-room, followed by Phoebe, who watched his actions with the greatest interest.

"What you doin' with that handle?" she asked.

"That sets the airyplane on the uptilt. I'm only settin' it a mite--jest 'nough to keep the machine from sinkin' down when we get to movin'."

"How are you goin' to lift us up?"

"Just let out a mite o' gas below," said Droop. He suited the action to the word, and, with a tremendous hissing beneath it, the vessel rose slowly.

Droop pulled the starting lever and they moved forward with increasing speed. When they had gathered way, he shut off the gas escape and carefully readjusted the aeroplanes until the machine as a whole moved horizontally.

There was felt a slight jerk as they reached the end of the rope, and then they began to move in a circle from east to west.

Phoebe glanced at the clock.

"Just five minutes past eight," she said.

The sun was pouring its beams into the right-hand windows when they started, but the shafts of light now began to sweep circularly across the floor, and in a few moments, as they faced the sun, it ceased to s.h.i.+ne in from the right. Immediately afterward it shone in at the left-hand windows and circled slowly around until again they were in shadow with the sun behind them.

Droop took out his watch and timed their revolutions by the sun's progress from window to window.

"'Bout one to the minute," he remarked. "Guess I'll speed her up a mite."

Carefully he regulated the speed, timing their revolutions accurately.

"There!" he said at length. "I guess that's pretty nigh two to the minute. D'ye feel any side weight?" he said, addressing his companions.

"No," said Rebecca.

Phoebe shook her head.

"You manage right well, Mr. Droop," she said. "You must have practised a good deal."

"Oh, not much," he replied, greatly pleased. "The future man showed me how to work it three--four times. It's simple 'nough when ye understand the principles."

These remarks brought a new idea to Rebecca's mind.

"Why, Mr. Droop," she exclaimed, "whatever's the use o' you goin' back to 1876! Why don't ye jest set up as the inventor o' this machine? I'm sure thet ought to make yer everlastin' fortune!"

"Oh, I thought o' that," he said. "But it's one thing to know how to work a thing an' it's a sight different to know how it's made an' all that. The future man tried to explain all the new scientific principles that was mixed into it--fer makin' power an' all--but I couldn't understand that part at all."

"An' besides," exclaimed Phoebe, "it's a heap more fun to be the only ones can use the thing, I think."

"Yes--seems like fun's all we're thinkin' of," said Rebecca, rising and moving toward the kitchen. "We're jest settin' round doin' nothin'. I'll finish with the breakfast things if you'll put to rights and dust, Phoebe. We can't make beds till night with the windows tight shut."

These suggestions were followed by the two women, while Droop, picking up the newspaper which Rebecca had brought, sat down to read.

After a long term of quiet reading, his attention was distracted by Rebecca's voice.

"I declare to goodness, Phoebe!" she was saying. "Seems's if every chance you get, you go to readin' those old letters."

"Well, the's one or two that's spelled so funny and written so badly that I haven't been able yet to read them," Phoebe replied.

Droop looked over his paper. Phoebe and her sister were seated near one of the windows on the opposite side.

"P'raps I could help ye, Cousin Phoebe," he said. "I've got mighty strong eyesight."

"Oh, 'tain't a question of eyesight," Phoebe replied, laughing.

"Oh, I see," said Droop, smiling slyly, "letters from some young feller, eh?"

He winked knowingly at Rebecca, who drew herself up indignantly and looked severely down at her knitting.

Phoebe blushed, but replied quite calmly:

"Yes--some of them from a young man, but they weren't any of them written to me."

"No?" said Droop. "Who was they to--'f I may ask?"

"They were all written to this lady."

Phoebe held something out for Droop's inspection, and he walked over to take it.

He recognized at once the miniature on ivory which he had seen once before in Peltonville.

"Well," he said, taking the portrait from her and eying it with his head on one side, "if ye hadn't said 'twasn't you, I'd certainly a-thought 'twas. I'd mos' sworn 'twas your photygraph, Cousin Phoebe. Who is it, anyway?"

"It isn't anybody," she replied, "but it _was_ Mistress Mary Burton of Burton Hall. I'm one of her descendants, an' these are some letters she had with her in this funny old carved box when she disappeared with her lover. They fled to Holland and were married there, the story goes, an'

one o' their children came over in the early days o' New England. He brought the letters an' the picture with him."

"Well, now! I want to know!" exclaimed Droop, in great admiration.

"'Twouldn't be perlite, I s'pose, to ask to hear some o' them letters?"

"Would you like to hear some of them?" Phoebe asked.

"I would fer a fact," he replied.

"Well, bring your chair over here and I'll read you one," she said.

Droop seated himself near the two sisters and Phoebe unfolded a large and rather rough sheet of paper, yellow with age, on which Droop perceived a bold scrawl in a faded ink.

"This seems to have been from Mary Burton's father," Phoebe said. "I don't think he can have been a very nice man. This is what he says:

"'Dear Poll'--horrid nickname, isn't it?"

"Seems so to me," said Droop.