"So in another day the four of 'em was landed on Ozone Island and so was the freight-car load of crates and boxes. Grub and necessaries was to be provided by Scudder--for salary as stated and commission understood.
"It took Nate less than a week to find out what old Dixland was up to. When he learned it, he set down in the sand and fairly snorted disgust. The old idiot was cal'latin' to FLY. Seems that for years he'd been experimentin' with what he called 'aeroplanes,' and now he'd reached the stage where he b'lieved he could flap his wings and soar. 'Thinks I,' says Nate, 'your life work's cut out for you, Nate Scudder. You'll spend the rest of your days as gen'ral provider for the Ozone private asylum.' Well, Scudder wa'n't complainin' none at the outlook. He couldn't make a good livin' no easier.
"The aeroplane was in sections in them boxes and crates. Nate and Augustus and the professor got out the sections and fitted 'em together. The buildin's on Ozone was all joined together--first the house, then the ell, then the wash-rooms and big sheds, and, finally, the barn. There was doors connectin', and you could go from house to barn, both downstairs and up, without steppin' outside once.
"'Twas in the barn that they built what Whiskers called the 'flyin' stage.' 'Twas a long chute arrangement on trestles, and the idea was that the aeroplane was to get her start by slidin' down the chute, out through the big doors and off by the atmosphere route to glory. I say that was the IDEA. In practice she worked different.
"Twice the professor made proclamations that everything was ready, and twice they started that flyin' machine goin'. The fust time Dixland was at the helm, and him and the aeroplane dropped headfust into the sandbank just outside the barn. The machine was underneath, and the pieces of it acted as a fender, so all the professor fractured was his temper. But it took ten days to get the contraption ready for the next fizzle. Then poor, shaky, scart Augustus was pilot, and he went so deep into the bank that Nate says he wondered whether 'twas wuth while doin' anything but orderin' the gravestone. But they dug him out at last, whole, but frightened blue, and his nerves was worse than ever after that.
"Then old Dixland announces that he has discovered somethin' wrong in the principle of the thing, and they had to wait while he ordered some new fittin's from Boston.
"Meanwhile there was other complications settin' in. Scudder was kept busy providin' grub and such like and helpin' the niece, Olivia, with the housework. Likewise he had his hands full keepin' the folks alongshore from findin' out what was goin' on. All this flyin' foolishness had to be a dead secret.
"But, busy as he was, he found time to notice the thick acquaintance that was developin' between Augustus and Olivia. Them two was what the minister calls 'kindred sperrits.' Seems she was sufferin' from science same as he was and, more'n that, she was loaded to the gunwale with 'social reform.' To hear the pair of 'em go on about helpin' the poor and 'settlement work' and such was enough, accordin' to Nate, to make you leave the table. But there!
He couldn't complain. Olivia was her uncle's only heir, and Nate could see a rainbow of promise ahead for the Scudder family.
"The niece was a nice, quiet girl. The only thing Nate had against her, outside of the sociology craziness and her not seemin' to take a shine to him, was her confounded pets. Nate said he never had no use for pets--lazy critters, eatin' up the victuals and costin' money--but Olivia was dead gone on 'em. She adopted an old reprobate of a tom-cat, which she labeled 'Galileo,' after an Eyetalian who invented spyglasses or somethin' similar, and a great big ugly dog that answered to the hail of 'Phillips Brooks'; she named him that because she said the original Phillips was a distinguished parson and a great philanthropist.
"That dog was a healthy philanthropist. When Nate kicked him the first time, he chased him the whole length of the barn. After that they had to keep him chained up. He was just pinin' for a chance to swaller Scudder whole, and he showed it.
"Well, as time went on, Olivia and Augustus got chummier and chummier. Nate give 'em all the chance possible to be together, and as for old Professor Whiskers, all he thought of, anyway, was his blessed flyin' machine. So things was shapin' themselves well, 'cordin' to Scudder's notion.
"One afternoon Nate come, unexpected, to the top of a sand hill at t'other end of the island, and there, below, set Olivia and Augustus. He had a clove hitch 'round her waist, and they was lookin' into each other's spectacles as if they was windows in the pearly gates. Thinks Nate: 'They've signed articles,' and he tiptoed away, feelin' that life wa'n't altogether an empty dream.
"They was lively hours, them that followed. To begin with, when Nate got back to the barn he found the professor layin' on the floor, under the flyin' stage, groanin' soulful but dismal. He'd slipped off one of the braces of the trestles and sprained both wrists and bruised himself till he wa'n't much more than one big lump. He hadn't bruised his tongue none to speak of, though, and his language wa'n't sprained so that you'd notice it. What broke him up most of all was that he'd got his aeroplane ready to 'fly' again, and now he was knocked out so's he couldn't be aboard when she went off the ways.
"'It is the irony of fate,' says he.
"'I got it off the blacksmith over to Wellmouth Centre,' Nate told him; 'but HE might have got it from Fate, or whoever you mean.
'Twas slippery iron, I know that, and I warned you against steppin' on it yesterday.'
