TROUBLE IN PROSPECT
The two chums did not see Mark Stratford for some days, in spite
of the fact that the young aviator came out of his accident so
miraculously. They had not been at home when he had called to
thank Mrs. Norwood for her kindness, and he was not likely to come
especially to Roselawn to call on Jessie and Amy, for both his age
and his various interests precluded his desiring the society of girls
so young. Amy sometimes said, glumly:
“Darry and his friends think they haven’t any time for their ‘kid
sisters’ and their friends. But wait till they want something—a
button sewed on, or knicker tapes fixed, or a book found, or
something. Then ‘little sister’ is just as handy to have around as a
little red wagon. Humph! What is six or seven years in age, Jess? I
ask you.”
“Six years of age will make all the difference for us that it has for
Darry and Burd—and more,” laughed Jessie Norwood. “Don’t be wishing
your life away, dear.”
“I’m not,” declared her chum. “I don’t want to be any older than I
am. I have none of Belle’s aspirations for grown-up-ness, let me
tell you. Only, I have always wished that Darry was younger than I,
so that I could boss him and snub him and do all those nice things to
him that other girls do who have younger brothers.”
“Oh, Amy!” cried Jessie, horrified, for she secretly thought
Darrington Drew a wonderful fellow.
“Now, don’t ‘Oh, Amy!’ me, please, honey. I mean what I say. See how
Nell Stanley bosses Bob and Fred around.”
“But she is just the same as a mother to those boys and to Sally,”
observed Jessie.
“And to the doctor, too,” laughed Amy suddenly. “I’ll say Nell rules
the whole parsonage.”
“She is a very capable girl.”
“True. But she can’t get very far ahead of Doctor Stanley. He is the
funniest man, Jess! It is so nice to have a pastor with a sense of
humor, isn’t it?”
“Momsy says that the sense of humor is something that all clergymen
must have. They have so much to contend with.”
“And I’ll say Doctor Stanley has it big,” said Amy, nodding. “I was
there the other day to take a book back to the doctor that papa had
borrowed, and while I was in the study Nell was discussing household
mechanics with her father.”
“Household mechanics?”
“It takes a good mechanic, Nell says, to make both ends meet on the
doctor’s salary. And this time it was Bob’s birthday that came to the
fore. What should they have for dinner that would be a treat, you
know. Said the doctor:
“‘Bob’s birthday? You don’t say so, Nellie. How that boy is getting
on! But what about it?’
“‘Nothing much, Reverend,’ Nell said, ‘only I thought we ought to
kill those two Rhode Island Red chickens.’
“And then the doctor said, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in
that funny way of his:
“‘But, Nellie, how can you blame those two chickens for what happened
fourteen years ago?’”
Jessie laughed delightedly at this. It was so typical of the good
clergyman’s humor. But she spoke with gravity, however, when she said:
“There’s Nell, too. I know she would like to do something on the
program for the hospital fund. She sings awfully well, Amy.”
“Say!” exclaimed the eager Amy. “Remember that trio we three sang for
the Sunday School Union that time? I know you want to sing your solo;
and I want to recite. But if we could take Nell in, too, and make a
trio of it—Oh, Jess! Let’s ask your mother.”
Jessie agreed to this; but when they arrived home they found Mrs.
Norwood busy with various affairs connected with the charitable
drive and Jessie had to sit down to the telephone and call up one
person after another to whom her mother wished to send messages.
“Wish we could broadcast all this,” she said. “It certainly will be
fine when every family has both a receiver and sender. Why, when that
day comes, ordinary telephones will be scarcely necessary.”
“I don’t know that I would want to send into the air all my private
affairs,” laughed her mother. “You know, sometimes I talk to Doctor
Leffert over the telephone and tell him my symptoms—or the symptoms I
think I have. Such very personal affairs——”
“And see!” broke in Amy, eagerly. “The air would be crowded with
a lot of folks talking at once. Think of that Sara Truro, down on
Breen Street, who chatters just like a magpie. She’d get the air and
Central would have to say, ‘Busy’ to everybody else for hours at a
time.”
“How very ridiculous,” chuckled Jessie. “A million people can talk at
once on the ether without interference. Our radio telephones will be
tuned to certain lengths of wave. If the person you want to talk to
is busy, he shuts you out with a switch and will send you a signal to
that effect. Oh, it’s coming!”
“So’s that radio concert,” her chum said, with a laugh. “Oh, I hope
we can get in it, Mrs. Norwood.”
“Now, don’t, my dears, talk to me about that now. And remember it is
not all my ‘say-so.’ We can have only so many amateur numbers. People
will open their receiving sets for the professionals like Madame
Elva and for the string band that has been arranged for. Mr. Blair
himself has promised to make the announcements and Doctor Stanley
will address the audience from the sending station on behalf of the
hospital’s need. Mr. Blair will, too, have the concert announced for
a week in advance, both at two and at eight o’clock. We hope that
will stir up considerable advance interest in our need.”
Amy was rather despondent when Jessie was excused from the telephone
and the girls were again out of doors.
“I suggested this scheme, didn’t I?” she demanded of her chum. “I
said ‘radio concert’ first. And now look! Maybe we won’t get a chance
to do stunts at the sending station at all!”
“We’ll just go and ask Mr. Blair himself. He seemed rather abrupt;
but I think he’s nice.”
“Or Mark. Why not ask Mark?” said Amy. “He says he wants to make it
up to us for smashing the aerial.”
“If we must ask Mark, we must,” agreed Jessie. “But I’d like to find
that watch of his before we ask a favor of him.”
The two friends made another thorough search of the vicinity where
the aeroplane had crashed. It did not seem as though the watch with
the diamond-set case could remain hidden in the soil or the grass or
in the upturned sod which marked the scene of the accident.
“I’ve got a pain in my back bending over and poking around so much,”
sighed Amy. “It positively is not here. Oh, dear, Jess! It is awful
to think it, but I feel that Montmorency Shannon must know something
about the watch.”
“I don’t want to think that,” said her friend positively.
“But how could a boy like him get fifteen dollars together to spend
for a radio set? And he says he is going to get it.”
“Maybe he just dreams he will,” Jessie rejoined more lightly.
“Anyway, Amy, let’s not suggest the idea to anybody else. I don’t
want to get that red-haired boy in trouble.”
“I declare! How about Mark, who is our friend?” Amy cried. “If Monty
picked up the watch and sold it——”
“Mark Stratford can much better afford to lose his watch than that
Shannon boy can afford to be accused wrongfully of stealing,” Jessie
said quickly. “I should think you would see that, Amy Drew.”
“Oh, well, I suppose you are right,” agreed the other girl. “Just the
same, if we helped Mark to recover his watch our having important
parts on the radio program—or on _some_ program—would be all plain
sailing. Mark would say: ‘Anything I can do for you, girls?’ You
know how generous he is, anyway. Oh dear! I am afraid there will be
heartaches over this concert program.”
“Oh! I hope not!” cried Jessie.
“What do you suppose is scheduled on the ether for right now? Come
on, if your mother doesn’t want your help any longer, and let’s
listen in,” said Amy.
The Roselawn radio girls were at the receiving set in Jessie’s room
much of the time, both day and evening, when there was nothing else
of importance to do. Now, when they opened the switch and put the
phones to their ears they ran against a trouble that many an amateur
finds and at first does not understand the cause of.
“Why, here!” cried Amy after a minute. “I don’t hear good. Do you,
Jess? Is there something the matter with my phones?”
“I hear the signals waning, too,” returned her chum. “And the sounds
started strong. Funny.”
“I can hardly hear now. There is something wrong.”
“Maybe the battery is running out,” Jessie suggested.
“What’s that mean?”
“Goodness, Amy! You know that sometimes a doorbell won’t ring because
the battery has failed.”
“But this battery isn’t like a doorbell battery, is it?”
“Exactly. It’s a B battery. And a B battery is merely a collection
of dry cells. The voltage is twenty-two and a half. That is because
the detector-tube gives best results when the voltage on the plate of
the tube does not exceed that figure. The number of electrons flowing
between filament and plate depends on the plate potential up to a
certain point——”
“Whatever that is!” ejaculated Amy, stopping her. “Don’t be so
scientific.”
“Not much science about that,” laughed her chum. “But our B battery,
I fear me, needs renewing. You see, any dry battery recuperates
considerably when not in use. These signals sounded loud enough when
we first listened in. But the sounds soon decreased.”
She took off her earphones. “I’ll go and telephone to Mr. Brill to
send up a fresh series of batteries for the set. I have no tester,
so I do not know how weak these batteries are.”
“I remember something,” said Amy suddenly. “Once when our doorbell
wouldn’t ring Darry opened the battery cases and soaked them in
vinegar. Wouldn’t that work in this case?”
“Nothing like that,” cried Jessie, waving her hands. “That might
be all right for a doorbell arrangement; but any such rejuvenation
around a radio equipment won’t do. You’d be breaking down again—and
perhaps right in the middle of something you wanted very much to
hear.”
So she insisted upon running downstairs to telephone to the hardware
store in Melford that carried electric appliances. Jessie Norwood had
learned a good many practical things about radio telephony and its
appliances. This because she had insisted upon erecting her set with
only the help of Amy and some small advice from Amy’s brother and his
chum, Burd Alling.
They heard from the two young collegians that evening. They were at
the yacht club moorings to which Darry Drew had brought his yacht,
the _Marigold_, again. The yacht was one that Darry’s uncle had
willed him as a legacy and which he had put into commission for the
first time this summer. As yet his sister and Jessie had not even
seen the _Marigold_.
“But they will give us a chance to go aboard of her next time they
sail,” Amy said, when she told Jessie that evening that the boys were
on their way home. “That is something else we want to do almost as
much as we want to get on a radio program.”
“Yes, indeed. I do so want to go aboard that yacht,” sighed Jessie.
“Why, Amy! I am afraid I am getting covetous, I want so many new
things.”
Amy chuckled. “Honey,” she said wisely, “if we didn’t want things,
and want ’em bad, the world would stand still. So Father Drew says,
and you know he is a very smart lawyer.”