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,