A HAPPY INSPIRATION
The days passed by, the boys becoming more and more engrossed in the
fascination of radio all the time. They continued to work on their sets,
sometimes with the most gratifying results, at others seeming to make
little headway.
But in spite of occasional discouragements they worked on, cheered by
the knowledge that they were making steady, if sometimes slow, progress.
There were so many really worth-while improvements being perfected each
day that they really found it difficult to keep up with them all.
"Wish we could hear Cassey's voice again," said Herb, one day when they
had tuned in on several more or less interesting personal messages.
"I don't know what good it would do us," grumbled Joe. "If he speaks
always in code he could keep us guessing till doomsday."
"He's up to some sort of mischief, anyway," said Bob; "and I, for one,
would enjoy catching him at it again."
"We would be more comfortable to have Dan Cassey in jail, where he
belongs," observed Jimmy.
But just at present the trailing of that stuttering voice seemed an
impossible feat even for the radio boys. If they could only get some
tangible clue to work on!
They saw nothing of Buck Looker or his cronies about town, and concluded
that they were still at the lumber camp.
"Can't stay away too long to suit me," Bob said cheerfully.
It was about that time that Bob found out about Adam McNulty. Adam
McNulty was the blind father of the washerwoman who served the four
families of the boys.
Bob went to the McNulty cabin, buried in the most squalid district of
the town, bearing a message from his mother. When he got there he found
that Mr. McNulty was the only one at home.
The old fellow, smoking a black pipe in the bare kitchen of the house,
seemed so pathetically glad to see some one--or, rather, to hear some
one--that Bob yielded to his invitation to sit down and talk to him.
And, someway, even after Bob reached home, he could not shake off the
memory of the lonesome old blind man with nothing to do all day long but
sit in a chair smoking his pipe, waiting for some chance word from a
passer-by.
It did not seem fair that he, Bob, should have all the good things of
life while that old man should have nothing--nothing, at all.
He spoke to his chums about it, but, though they were sympathetic, they
did not see anything they could do.
"We can't give him back his eyesight, you know," said Joe absently,
already deep in a new scheme of improvement for the set.
"No," said Bob. "But we might give him something that would do nearly as
well."
"What do you mean?" they asked, puzzled.
"Radio," said Bob, and laid his hand lovingly on the apparatus. "If it
means a lot to us, just think how much more it would mean to some one
who hasn't a thing to do all day but sit and think. Why, I don't suppose
any of us who can see can begin to realize what it would mean not to be
able even to read the daily newspaper."
The others stared at Bob, and slowly his meaning sank home.
"I get you," said Joe slowly. "And say, let me tell you, it's a great
idea, Bob. It wouldn't be so bad to be blind if you could have the daily
news read to you every day----"
"And listen to the latest on crops," added Jimmy.
"To say nothing of the latest jazz," finished Herb, with a grin.
"Well, why doesn't this blind man get himself a set?" asked Jimmy
practically. "I should think every blind person in the country would
want to own one."
"I suppose every one of them does," said Bob. "And Doctor Dale said the
other day that he thought the time would come when charities for the
blind would install radio as a matter of humanity, and that prices of
individual sets would be so low that all the blind could afford them.
The blind are many of them old, you know, and pretty poor."
"You mean," said Herb slowly, "that most of the blind folks who really
need radio more than anybody else can't afford it? Say, that doesn't
seem fair, does it?"
"It isn't fair!" cried Bob, adding, eagerly: "I tell you what I thought
we could do. There's that old set of mine! It doesn't seem much to us
now, beside our big one, but I bet that McNulty would think it was a
gold mine."
"Hooray for Bob!" cried Herb irrepressibly. "Once in a while he really
does get a good idea in his head. When do we start installing this set
in the McNulty mansion, boys?"
"As soon as you like," answered Bob. "Tomorrow's Saturday, so we could
start early in the morning. It will probably take us some time to rig up
the antenna."
The boys were enthusiastic about the idea, and they wasted no time
putting it into execution. That very night they looked up the old set,
examining it to make sure it was in working order.
When they told their families what they proposed to do, their parents
were greatly pleased.
"It does my heart good," said Mr. Layton to his wife, after Bob had gone
up to bed, "to see that those boys are interested in making some one
besides themselves happy."
"They're going to make fine men, some day," answered Mrs. Layton softly.
The boys arrived at the McNulty cottage so early the next morning that
they met Maggie McNulty on her way to collect the day's wash.
When they told her what they were going to do she was at first too
astonished to speak and then threatened to fall upon their necks in her
gratitude.
"Shure, if ye can bring some sunshine into my poor old father's dark
life," she told them in her rich brogue, tears in her eyes, "then ye'll
shure win the undyin' gratitude uv Maggie McNulty."
It was a whole day's job, and the boys worked steadily, only stopping
long enough to rush home for a bit of lunch.
They had tried to explain what they were doing to Adam McNulty, but the
old man seemed almost childishly mystified. It was with a feeling of
dismay that the boys realized that, in all probability, this was the
first time the blind man had ever heard the word radio. It seemed
incredible to them that there could be anybody in the world who did not
know about radio.
However, if Adam McNulty was mystified, he was also delightedly,
pitifully excited. He followed the boys out to the cluttered back yard
where they were rigging up the aerial, listening eagerly to their
chatter and putting in a funny word now and then that made them roar
with laughter.
Bob brought him an empty soap box for a seat and there the old man sat
hour after hour, despite the fact that there was a chill in the air,
blissfully happy in their companionship. He had been made to understand
that something pleasant was being done for him, but it is doubtful if he
could have asked for any greater happiness than just to sit there with
somebody to talk to and crack his jokes with.
They were good jokes too, full of real Irish wit, and long before the
set was ready for action the boys had become fond of the old fellow.
"He's a dead game sport," Joe said to Bob, in that brief interval when
they had raced home for lunch. "I bet I'd be a regular old crab, blind
like that."
Mrs. Layton put up an appetizing lunch for the blind man, topping it off
with a delicious homemade lemon pie and a thermos bottle full of
steaming coffee.
The way the old man ate that food was amazing even to Jimmy. Maggie was
too busy earning enough to keep them alive to bother much with dainties.
At any rate, Adam ate the entire lemon pie, not leaving so much as a
crumb.
"I thought I was pretty good on feeding," whispered Joe, in a delighted
aside, "but I never could go that old bird. He's got me beat a mile."
"Well," said Jimmy complacently, "I bet I'd tie with him."
If the boys had wanted any reward for that day of strenuous work, they
would have had it when, placing the earphones upon his white head, they
watched the expression of McNulty's face change from mystification to
wonder, then to beatific enjoyment.
He listened motionless while the exquisite music flooded his starved old
soul. Toward the end he closed his eyes and tears trickled from beneath
the lids down his wrinkled face. He brushed them off impatiently and the
boys noticed that his hand was trembling.
It was a long, long time before he seemed to be aware that there was any
one in the room with him. He seemed to have completely forgotten the
boys who had bestowed this rare gift upon him.
After a while, coming out of his dream, the old man began fumbling with
the headphones as if he wanted to take them off, and Bob helped him. The
man tried to speak, but made hard work of it. Emotion choked him.
"Shure, an' I don't know what to make of it at all, at all," he said at
last, in a quivering voice. "Shure an' I thought the age of miracles was
passed. I'm only an ignorant old man, with no eyes at all; but you lads
have given me something that's near as good. Shure an' it's an old
sinner I am, for shure. Many's the day I've sat here, prayin' the Lord
would give me wan more minute o' sight before I died, an' it was
unanswered my prayers wuz, I thought. It's grateful I am to yez, lads.
It's old Adam McNulty's blessin' ye'll always have. An' now will yez put
them things in my ears? It's heaven's own angels I'd like to be hearin'
agin. That's the lad--ah!"
And while the beatific expression stole once more over his blind old
face the boys stole silently out.