"Hello, old top--how they using yuh?" greeted a voice that had in it a
familiar, whining note.

Johnny's muscles stiffened. Hostility, suspicion, surprise surged
confusingly through his brain. He turned as one who was bracing
himself to meet an enemy, with a primitive prickling where the bristles
used to rise on the necks of our cavemen ancestors.




CHAPTER TWO

AND THE CAT CAME BACK

"Why, hello, Bland," Johnny exclaimed after the first blank silence.
"I thought you was tied up in a sack and throwed into the pond long
ago!"

The visitor grinned with a sour droop to his mouth, a droop which
Johnny knew of old. "But the cat came back," he followed the simile,
blinking at Johnny with his pale, opaque blue eyes. "What yuh doing
here? Starting an aviation school?"

"Yeah. Free instruction. Want a lesson?" Johnny retorted, only half
the sarcasm intended for Bland; the rest going to the town that had
failed to disgorge a buyer for what he had to sell.

"Aw, I suppose you think you could give me lessons, now you've learned