The Kelly aviators gazed curiously, some of them resentfully, at the newcomers.  They had all the professional’s antipathy and jealousy of amateur performers.  As the Arrangement Committee bustled off after telling our friends to make themselves perfectly at home, Pepita Le Roy came up to them.  She was a handsome woman, in a foreign way, with large, dark eyes and an abundance of raven black hair.  She was rather flashily dressed and walked with a sort of swagger that in a vague way reminded Peggy of “Carmen.”

“So you are zee girl aviators,” she remarked, as she came up.

“Yes; I guess that’s what they call us,” rejoined Peggy; “we enjoy flying and have done a lot of it.”

“So!  I have read your names in zee papers.”

“Oh, those awful papers!” cried Jess, who hated publicity; “they are always printing things about us.”

“What!  You do not like it?”

“Oh, no!  You see, we only fly for fun.  Not as a business and—­”

Peggy stopped short.  She felt she had committed a grave breach of tactfulness.  It was not the thing, she felt, to boast to a professional woman flyer of their standing as amateurs.

Nor was the Cuban woman slow to take umbrage at what she considered an insult.  Her eyes flashed indignantly as she regarded the fair-haired, slender girl before her.

“So you fly only for fun,” she said vehemently; “very well, you have all zee fun you want before to-day is ovaire.”

Without another word she walked off, with the swinging walk of her race.

The girls looked at each other with a sort of amused dismay.

“Goodness, Peggy; you should be more careful,” cried Bess; “you’ve hurt her feelings dreadfully.”

“I’m sure I didn’t mean to,” declared Peggy remorsefully.  “I—­I had no idea that she would flare up like that.”

“Well, after all, it doesn’t matter much,” soothed Jess, pouring oil on the troubled waters, so to speak.  “I’m glad the boys didn’t hear it though.”

“So am I. See, they’re busy on Roy’s machine,” exclaimed Bess.

“Yes; the lower left wing is rather warped,” explained Peggy; “they are fixing it.”

“Wonder who that man is who is monkeying with the Red Dragon?” said Peggy, the next instant.  “I mean that horrid looking man in the check suit.”

“I don’t know.  See, he has a monkey wrench in his hand, too,” exclaimed Bess.

Almost simultaneously the boys looked round from their work on the biplane and saw the man.  It was Lish Kelly.  He was bending over the engine and doing something to it with his wrench.

“Hey!  What are you doing there?” yelled Roy.

“Just looking at your machine.  No harm in that, is there?” demanded Kelly, with a red face.

“None at all, except that we don’t want our machines touched.  How comes it you have that monkey wrench in your hands if you weren’t tampering with the machinery?”