The girl was not reading, however.  Her blue eyes were staring straight up through the delicate green tracery of the big maples, at the sky above.  She watched, with lazy fascination, tiny white clouds drifting slowly across the blue, like tiny argosies of the heavens.  Her mind was far away from Sandy Beach and its peaceful surroundings.  The young girl’s thoughts were of the desert, the bleak, arid wastes of alkali, which lay so far behind them now.  Almost like events that had happened in another life.

Suddenly she was aroused from her reverie by a voice—­a remarkably pleasant voice: 

“I beg your pardon.  Is this the Prescott house?”

“Good gracious, a man!” exclaimed Peggy to herself, getting out of the hammock as gracefully as she could, and with a rather flushed face.

At the gate stood a rickety station hack, which had approached on the soft, dusty road almost noiselessly.  Just stepping out of it was a sunburned young man, very upright in carriage, and dressed in a light-gray suit, with a jaunty straw hat.  He carried a bamboo cane, which he switched somewhat nervously as the pretty girl advanced toward him across the velvet-like lawn.

“I am Lieut.  Bradbury of the navy,” said the newcomer, and Peggy noted that his whole appearance was as pleasant and wholesome as his voice.  “I came—­er in response to your letter to the department, in regard to the forthcoming trials of aeroplanes for the service.”

“Oh, yes,” exclaimed Peggy, smothering an inclination to giggle, “we—­I—­that is——­”

“I presume that I have called at the right place,” said the young officer, with a smile.  “They told me——­”

“Oh, come in, won’t you?” suddenly requested the embarrassed Peggy.  “The sun is fearfully hot.  Won’t you have a straw hat—­I mean a seat?”

“Thank you,” replied Lieut.  Bradbury, gravely sitting in a garden bench at the foot of one of the big maples.  His eyes fell on the book Peggy had been reading.  It was a treatise on aeronautics.

“It isn’t possible that you are R. Prescott?” he asked, glancing up quickly.

“Oh, no.  I am only a humble helper.  R. Prescott is in town.  He—­he will be back shortly.”

“Indeed.  I had hoped to see him personally.  I was anxious to inspect the Prescott type of monoplane before visiting another aeroplane plant in this neighborhood, the—­the——­” The officer drew out a small morocco covered notebook and referred to it.

“The Mortlake Aeroplane Company,” he concluded.

“Oh, yes.  They are just down the road, within a stone’s throw of here.  You can see the place from here; that big barn-like structure,” volunteered Peggy, heartily wishing that the Mortlake plant had been a hundred miles away.

“Indeed.  That’s very convenient.  I shall be able to make an early train back to New York.  Do you suppose that Mr. Prescott will be long?”

“I don’t really know.  He shouldn’t be unless he is delayed.  But in the meantime I can show you the aeroplane, if you wish.”