The Radio Girls on the program

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.”