Oh, well, it is nothing so large as what I have in England: there I have forty men at least: officers and riflemen and runners, not counting my ground-crew. We are all of us in the Royal Aerial Corps, and we fight against Napoleon and Lien and the French, who are trying to take over all of Europe at present.

[And, because he is roughly the size of a small bus at present, and his reduced stature might give her reason to doubt him:] I am normally much larger, at least three times this size: they have shrunk me, you see. Here my crew is--well, it is harder to maintain, when people come and go so often, but we fly drills and hold ourselves ready, as I might at home, in case it should ever come to a fight.