"Oh, I'd just love to have an aeroplanette like that!" exclaimed Millie.
"Mrs. Smith says she simply couldn't do without hers now; it makes her
so independent. She can pop up to town, do her shopping and get back in
a short afternoon."

"Um--yes," calculated John. "Less than seventy miles the double
journey--she'd manage that all right."

"And that pilot of theirs," went on Millie, "seems just as safe with the
'pup' as he is with that great twin-engined bus her husband is so keen
on."

"Yes," said John; "must be quite an undertaking getting Smith's
tri-plane on the sky-way. It's useful for a family party, though. I
hear he packed twenty or thirty on to it for the picnic they had
at John-o'-Groat's last week. By the way," added John, as he moved
upstairs, "aren't the Robinsons coming to dinner?"

"Yes, you'd better hurry up and change," advised Millie.

The Robinsons were very up-to-date people, John decided as they sat
down to the meal a little later. He hadn't met them before. They were
Millie's friends.

"Very glad to know such near neighbours," he said cordially. "Why, it's
under forty miles to your place, I should think."

"Forty-seven kilos, to be exact," Robinson volunteered, "and I should
say we did it under twenty minutes."