CHAPTER VISOMETHING COMING
That afternoon Mr. Norwood brought home the radio receiving set in the automobile. The two girls, with a very little help, but a plethora of suggestion from Darry and Burd, proceeded to establish the set on a table in Jessie’s room, and attach the lead-in wire and the ground wire.
Jessie had bought a galena crystal mounted, as that was more satisfactory, the book said. After all the parts of the radio set had been assembled and the connections made, the first essential operation, if they were to make use of the invention at once, was to adjust the tiny piece of wire—the “cat’s whisker”—which lightly rests on the crystal-detector, to a sensitive point.
Jessie, who had read the instruction book carefully, knew that this adjustment might be made in several different ways. One satisfactory way is by the use of a miniature buzzer transmitter.
“What are we going to hear?” Amy demanded eagerly. “How you going to tune her, Jess?”
“As there are only three sets of head phones,”grumbled Burd, “one of us is bound to be a stepchild.”
“We can take turns,” Jessie said, eagerly. “What time is it, Darry?”
“It points to eight, Jess.”
“Then there is a concert about to start at that station not more than thirty miles away from here. We ought to hear that fine,” declared the hostess of the party.
“What is the wave length?” Amy asked.
“Three-sixty. We can easily get it,” and Jessie adjusted the buzzer a little, the phones at her ears.
Eagerly they settled down to listen in. At least, three of them listened. Darry said he felt like the fifth wheel of an automobile—the one lashed on behind.
“I shall have to get an amplifier—a horn,” Jessie murmured.
At first she heard only a funny scratchy sound; then a murmur, growing louder, as she tuned the instrument to the required wave length. The murmurous sound grew louder—more distinct. Amy squealed right out loud! For it seemed as though somebody had said in her ear:
“—and will be followed by the Sextette from Lucia. I thank you.”
“We’re just in time,” said Burd. “They are going to begin the concert.”
String music, reaching their ears so wonderfully, hushed their speech. But Darry got close to his sister, stretching his ear, too, to distinguish the sounds. The introduction to the famous composition was played brilliantly, then the voices of the singers traveled to the little group in Jessie Norwood’s room from the broadcasting station thirty miles away.
“Isn’t it wonderful! Wonderful!” murmured Amy.
“Sh!” admonished her chum.
When the number was ended, Burd Alling removed his head harness and gravely shook hands with Jessie.
“Some calico, you are,” he declared. “Don’t ever go to college, Jess. It will spoil your initiative.”
“You needn’t call me by your slang terms. ‘Calico,’ indeed!” exclaimed Jessie. “Calico hasn’t been worn since long before the war.”
“You might at least call us ‘ginghams,’” sniffed Amy.
“Wait!” commanded Jessie. “Here comes something else. You take my ear-tabs, Darry.”
“Wait a moment,” cried Amy, who still had her phones to her ears. Then she groaned horribly. “It’s a lecture! Oh! Merciful Moses’ aunt! Here! You listen in, Darry!”
“What’s it all about?” asked her brother.
“A talk on ‘The Home Beautiful,’” giggled Burd, “by One of the Victims. Come on, Darry. You may have my phones too.”
As all three seemed perfectly willing to let him have their listening paraphernalia, Darry refused. “Your unanimity is poisonous,” he said. “The Greeks bearing gifts.”
“Let’s get a rain check for this,” suggested Burd.
“It will last only twenty minutes, according to the schedule,” Jesse said, with a sigh. It was such a fine plaything that she disliked giving it up for a minute.
They talked, on all kinds of subjects. The boys had had no time before to tell the girls about theMarigold. Just such another craft it was evident had never come off the ways!
“And it is big enough to take out a party of a dozen,” Darry declared. “Some time this summer we are going to get up a nice crowd and sail as far as Bar Harbor—maybe.”
“Why not to the Bahamas, Darry?” drawled his sister.
“And there, too,” said Darry, stoutly. “Oh, theMarigoldis a seaworthy craft. We are going down to Atlantic Highlands in her next. Burd’s got a crush on a girl who is staying there for the summer,” and he said it wickedly, grinning at his sister.
“Sure,” his chum agreed quickly, before Amy’s tart tongue could comment. “She’s my maiden aunt, and I’ve got a lot of things to thank her for.”
“And she can’t read writing, so we have to go to see her,” chuckled Darry.
“Send us a snapshot of her, Darry,” begged Jessie, not unwilling to tease her chum, for it was usually Amy who did the teasing.
“I should worry if Burd has a dozen maiden aunts,” observed Amy scornfully, “and they all knitted him red wristlets!”
“How savage,” groaned Darry. “Red wristlets, no less!”
The girls had news to relate to the boys as well. The church society was going to have a summer bazaar on the Fourth of July and a prize had been offered by the committee in charge for the most novel suggestion for a money-making “stunt” at the lawn party.
“I hope they will make enough to pay Doctor Stanley’s salary,” Darry said.
“We want to raise his salary,” Jessie told him. “With all those children I don’t see how he gets on.”
“He wouldn’t ‘get on’ at all if it wasn’t for Nell,” said Amy warmly. “She is a wonderful manager.”
The boys departed for City Island and theMarigoldthe next morning; but they promised to return from their trip to Atlantic Highlands in season for the church bazaar.
For the next few days Jessie and Amy were busy almost all day long, and evening too, with the radio. They even listened to the weather predictions and the agricultural report and market prices!
The Norwood home never had been so popular before. People, especially Jessie’s school friends, were coming to the house constantly to look at the radio set and to “listen in” on the airways. The interest they all took in it was amusing.
“You see, Momsy,” laughed Jessie, when she and her mother were alone one day, “if my radio set were downstairs here, I wouldn’t have much use of it. Even old Mrs. Grimsby has been in twice to talk about it, and yesterday she came upstairs to try it.”
“But she won’t have one in her house,” Mrs. Norwood said. “I don’t know—I didn’t think of it before, Jessie. But do you suppose it is safe?”
“Suppose what is safe, dear?”
“Having all those wires outside the house? Mrs. Grimsby says she would not risk it.”
“Why not, for mercy’s sake?” cried Jessie.
“Lightning. When we had a shower yesterdayI was really frightened. Those wires might draw lightning.”
“But,dear!” gasped Jessie. “Didn’t I show you the lightning switch?”
“Yes, child. I told Mrs. Grimsby about that. Do you know what she said?”
“Something funny, I suppose?”
“She said she wouldn’t trust a little thing like that to turn God’s lightning if He wanted to strike this house.”
“O-oh!” gasped Jessie. “What a dreadful idea she must have of the Creator. I’m going to tell Doctor Stanley that.”
“I guess the good doctor has labored with Mrs. Grimsby more than once regarding her harsh doctrinal beliefs. However, the fact that such wires may draw lightning cannot be gainsaid.”
“Oh, dear, me! I hope you won’t worry Momsy. It can’t be so, or there would be something about it in the radio papers and in those books. In one place I saw it stated that the aerials were really preventative of lightning striking the house.”
“I know. They used to have lightning rods on houses, especially in the country. But it was found to be a good deal of a fallacy. I guess, after all, Mrs. Grimsby has it partly right. Human beings cannot easily command the elements which Nature controls.”
“Seems to me we are disproving that right in this radio business,” cried Jessie. “And it is going to be wonderful—justwonderful—before long. They say moving pictures will be transmitted by radio; and there will be machines so that people can speak directly back and forth, and you’ll have a picture before you of the person you are speaking to.”
She began to laugh again. “You know what Amy says? She says she always powders her nose before she goes to the telephone. You never know who you may have to speak to! So she is ready for the new invention.”
“Just the same, I am rather timid about the lightning, Jessie,” her mother said.