Chapter VIII. Andy Foger's Revenge

During the following week, Tom was kept busy over the airship. He made many important changes, and one of these was to use a new kind of gas in the balloon bag. He wanted a gas with a greater lifting power than that of the ordinary illuminating vapor which Mr. Fenwick had used.

"Well," remarked Tom, as he came from the airship shed one afternoon, "I think we can give it a try-out, Mr. Fenwick, in a few days more. I shall have to go back to Shopton to get some articles I need, and when I come back I will bring Mr. Damon with me, and we will see what the Whizzer can do."

"Do you mean we will make a trial flight?"

"Yes."

"For how long a distance?"

"It all depends on how she behaves," answered Tom, with a smile. "If possible, we'll make a long flight."

"Then I'll tell you what I'm going to do," went on the inventor, "I'm going to put aboard a stock of provisions, and some other supplies and stores, in case we are two or three days in the air."

"It might not be a bad plan," agreed Tom, "though I hardly think we will be gone as long as that."

"Well, being out in the air always makes me hungry," proceeded Mr. Fenwick, "so I'm going to take plenty of food along."

The time was to come, and that very soon, when this decision of the inventor of the Whizzer stood the adventurers in good stead.

Tom returned to Shopton the next day, and sent word to have Mr. Damon join him in time to go back to the Quaker City two days later.

"But why don't you start right back to Philadelphia to-morrow," asked Mr. Swift of his son.

"Because," answered Tom, and that was all the reason he would give, though had any one seen him reading a certain note a few minutes before that, which note was awaiting him on his arrival from the Quaker City, they would not have wondered at his decision.

The note was brief. It merely said:

"Won't you come, and have some apple turnovers? The new cook is a treasure, and the girls are anxious to meet you."

It was signed: Mary Nestor.

"I think I could enjoy some apple turnovers," remarked Tom, with a smile.

Having gotten ready the few special appliances he wished to take back to Philadelphia with him, Tom went, that evening, to call on Miss Nestor. True to her promise, the girl had a big plate full of apple turnovers, which she gaily offered our hero on his arrival, and, on his laughing declination to partake of so many, she ushered him into a room full of pretty girls, saying:

"They'll help you eat them, Tom. Girls, here is Mr. Swift, who doesn't mind going up in the air or under the ocean, or even catching runaway horses," by which last she referred to the time Tom saved her