Chapter III. Tom Knocks Out Andy

"Do you want me to come in and help you?" asked the young inventor, of Miss Nestor.

"Do you know anything about hiring a cook?" she inquired, with an arch smile.

"I'm afraid I don't," the lad was obliged to confess.

"Then I'm a little doubtful of your ability to help me. But I'm ever so much obliged to you. I'll see if I can engage one. The cook who just left went away because I asked her to make some apple turnovers. Some of the girls who are coming are very fond of them."

"So am I," spoke Tom, with a smile.

"Are you, indeed? Then, if the cook I hope to get now will make them, I'll invite you over to have some, and--also meet my friends."

"I'd rather come when just you, and the turnovers and the cook are there," declared Tom, boldly, and Mary, with a blush, made ready to leave the electric car.

"Thank you," she said, in a low voice.

"If I can't help you select a cook," went on Tom, "at least let me call and take you home when you have engaged one."

"Oh, it will be too much trouble," protested Miss Nestor.

"Not at all. I have only to send a message, and get some piano wire, and then I'll call back here for you. I'll take you and the new cook back home flying."

"All right, but don't fly so fast. The cook may get frightened, and leave before she has a chance to make an apple turnover."

"I'll go slower. I'll be back in fifteen minutes," called Tom, as he swung the car out away from the curb, while Mary Nestor went into the intelligence office.

Tom wrote and sent this message to Mr. Hostner Fenwick, of Philadelphia:

"Will come on to-morrow in my aeroplane, and aid you all I can. Will not promise to make your electric airship fly, though. Father sends regards."

"Just rush that, please," he said to the telegraph agent, and the latter, after reading it over, remarked:

"It'll rush itself, I reckon, being all about airships, and things like that," and he laughed as Tom paid him.

Selecting several sizes of piano wire of great strength, to use as extra guy-braces on the Butterflv, Tom re-entered his electric car, and hastened back to the intelligence office, where he had left his friend. He saw her standing at the front door, and before he could alight, and go to her, Miss Nestor came cut to meet him.

"Oh, Tom!" she exclaimed, with a little tragic gesture, "what do you think?"

"I don't know," he answered good-naturedly. "Does the new cook refuse to come unless you do away with apple turnovers?"

"No, it isn't that. I have engaged a real treasure, I'm sure, but as soon as I mentioned that you would take us home in the electric