A Honeymoon in Space Read Online Free Page B

don’t do that sort of thing in England, do you? Uncle Russell is a Sound Money man too. He’s got too much gold locked up to want silver for it.”
    â€œMy dear Zaidie,” said Mrs. Van Stuyler, “what have democratic and republican politics and bimetalism got to do with—”
    â€œWith a trip in this wonderful vessel which Pop told me years ago could go up to the stars if it ever was made? Why just this, Lord Redgrave is an Englishman and too rich to believe in anything but sound money, so is Uncle Russell, and there you have it, or should have.”
    â€œI think I see what you mean, Miss Rennick,” said their host, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, as steamboat travellers are wont to do when seas are smooth and skies are blue. “The Astronef might come down like a vision from the clouds and preach the Gospel of Gold in electric rays of silver through the commonplace medium of the Morse Code. How’s that for poetry and practice?”
    â€œI quite agree with his lordship as regards the practice,” said Mrs. Van Stuyler, talking somewhat rudely across him to Zaidie. “It would be an excellent use to put this wonderful invention to. And then, I am sure his lordship would land us in Central Park, so that we could go to your Uncle’s house right away.”
    â€œNo, no, I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse me there, Mrs. Van Stuyler,” said Redgrave, with a change of tone which Miss Zaidie appreciated with a swiftly veiled glance. “You see, I have placed myself beyond the law. I have, as you have been good enough to intimate, abducted—to put it brutally—two ladies from the deck of an Atlantic liner. Further, in doing so I have selfishly spoiled the prospects of one of the ladies. But, seriously, I really must go to Washington first—”
    â€œI think, Lord Redgrave,” interrupted Mrs. Van Stuyler, ignoring the last unfinished sentence and assuming her best Knickerbocker dignity, “if you will forgive me saying so, that that is scarcely a subject for discussion here.”
    â€œAnd if that’s so,” interrupted Miss Zaidie, “the less we say about it the better. What I wanted to say was this. We all want the Republicans in, at least all of us that have much to lose. Now, if Lord Redgrave was to use this wonderful air-ship of his on the right side—why there wouldn’t be any standing against it.”
    â€œI must say that until just now I had hardly contemplated turning the Astronef into an electioneering machine. Still, I admit that she might be made use of in a good cause, only I hope—”
    â€œThat we shan’t want you to paste her over with election bills, eh?—or start handbill-snowstorms from the deck—or kidnap Croker and Bryan just as you did us, for instance?”
    â€œIf I could, I’m quite sure that I shouldn’t have as pleasant guests as I have now on board the Astronef . What do you think, Mrs. Van Stuyler?”
    â€œMy dear Lord Redgrave,” she replied, “that would be quite impossible. The idea of being shut up in a ship like this which can soar not only from earth, but beyond the clouds, with people who would find out your best secrets and then perhaps shoot you so as to be the only possessors of them—well, that would be foolishness indeed.”
    â€œWhy, certainly it would,” said Zaidie; “the only use you could have for people like that would be to take them up above the clouds and drop them out. But suppose we—I mean Lord Redgrave—took the Astronef down over New York and signalled messages from the sky at night with a searchlight—”
    â€œGood,” said their host, getting up from his deck-chair and stretching himself up straight, looking the while at Miss Zaidie’s averted profile. “That’s gorgeously good! We might even turn the election. I’m for sound money all