Our Mutual Girl, No. 29 (1914)

Margaret has found The Woman with the Red Rose, as bidden to do by Madame Dolores. She has learned the secret that The Woman holds for her. It is fraught with either menace or joy, but which? Only distance and the flight of time can give the proper perspective to that. And then, while Our Mutual Girl, Mrs. Knickerbocker, Madge Travis, Margaret's friend, and Howard Dunbar, The Man of Mystery, are discussing the excitement of the preceding days while Margaret's quest was on, Our Mutual Girl, with characteristic impulsiveness, abruptly changes the topic of conversation. Water that has gone over the dam, ever has been uninteresting to Margaret. Barring her artistic standards, she is a post-futurist in action. She had met Lieut. John C. Porte, who will try to fly across the Atlantic in his huge airboat, in the early winter. And now, as the hydro-aeroplane rapidly nears completion, the New York newspapers are filled with stories of this remarkable undertaking. Margaret, ever an omnivorous reader of the day's news, sees a story of Lieutenant Porte's trying-out flights. Instantly she makes up her mind to go up in The America. And, the idea once implanted in her swift, fertile brain, action rapidly follows. She broaches the subject to her aunt. Mrs. Knickerbocker remonstrates. Miss Travis objects. Dunbar teases, and foolishly adds to Margaret's determination to go up by wagering with her that she will not fly.