Where did you ever get them?"
"My father was a collector, on a very small scale of course, and
my mother had a passion for hoarding which prevented anything from
going out of this house after it had once come into it,--and a
great many strange things have come into it. There have even been
bets made as to the finding or not finding of a given object under
this roof. Pardon me, perhaps I bore you."
"Not at all. It's very interesting. But what about the bets?"
"Oh, just this. One day two men were chaffing each other in one of
the hotel lobbies, and the conversation turning upon what this
house held, one of them wagered that he knew of something I could
not fish out of my attic, and when the other asked what, he said
an aeroplane--Why he didn't say a locomotive, I don't know; but he
said an aeroplane, and the other, taking him up, they came here
together and put me the question straight. Mrs. Scoville, you may
not believe it, but my good friend won that bet. Years ago when
people were just beginning to talk about air-sailing machines, my
brother who was visiting me, amused his leisure hours in putting
together something he called a 'flyer.' And what is more, he went
up in it, too, but he came down so rapidly that he kept quite
still about it, and it fell to me to lug the broken thing in. So
when these gentlemen asked to see an aeroplane, I took them into a
lean-to where I store my least desirable things, and there pointed
out a mass of wings and bits of tangled wire, saying as
dramatically as I could: 'There she is!' And they first stared,
then laughed; and when one complained: 'That's a ruin, not an
aeroplane,' I answered with all the demureness possible; 'and what
is any aeroplane but a ruin in prospect? This has reached the ruin
stage; that's all.
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