SOMETHING 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 the _Marigold_. 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, the _Marigold_ is 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 the _Marigold_ the 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 yesterday I 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—just
_wonderful_—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.