The Radio Girls on the program

“Oh, come on! We’ll listen in on the radio concert, honey, and forget it,” Amy Drew said soothingly.

“But she’s so mean!” insisted Jessie Norwood. “So awfully mean!”

“Of course she is. Did you ever hear of anybody by the name of Ringold that wasn’t mean? Not me!” And Amy tossed her head.

“But that does not do a bit of good,” complained Jessie, her face still crimson and her eyes moist. “I cannot, Amy, overlook Belle’s rudeness just because it runs in her family.”

Amy giggled and sprang one of her jokes:

“Just because meanness runs in the Ringold family, like wooden legs,” she said. “I know how you feel about that dress, Jess.”

Jessie Norwood looked down at the frock she wore so daintily with eyes that were still clouded.

“If the Ringold’s cook, as Belle says, has a Sunday dress just like this I’ll never want to wear it again. Not because her cook isn’t just as good as I am,” Jessie added quickly, as she chanced to see the expression on her chum’s face, “but because Momsy bought the goods and had it made up by her own dressmaker, and it is supposed to be a little different from what you get in the ready-to-wear shops.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amy urged. “Belle’s talk isn’t as bad as the measles, or some other fell disease. Come on. If we catch the concert at four we’ll hear Madame Elva; and you know she is the very best on the Stratford Electric Company’s program.”

The two Roselawn girls were walking up the boulevard from town on this July afternoon. The wide highway was speckled with broken bits of sunshine, patterned through the leaves of the tall elms. Now and then an automobile purred past the girls on one of the two oiled drives, or a horseman clattered by. Roselawn was distinctly the better suburban district of New Melford.

“We could have such nice times in our set,” sighed Jessie, after a long minute, “if it wasn’t for Belle Ringold and Sally Moon and their crowd. They are forever interfering.”

“Static?” suggested Amy, grinning.

“No ether interference was ever as bad as Belle and Sally. See how they are annoying the boys about that moonlight box-party they have been trying to arrange for two weeks.”

“The present moon will be quite worn out before they get around to the party,” laughed Amy. “And, anyway, Darry and Burd have gone down to Barnegat to put the Marigold in commission again. If Belle holds off her moonlight party until they get back she’ll wait till frost.”

“Oh! You don’t mean that the boys will stay away all summer, Amy?” cried her chum.

“No,” rejoined Amy demurely. “I meant it will be a frost for Belle and Sally. Darry positively refuses to be roped in by Belle and her crowd.”

“I never did feel like this about any other girl,” Jessie Norwood confessed. “But I don’t really believe there ever was such an unpleasant girl as Belle Ringold.”

“Oh, yes, there must have been at least one,” said Amy, the irrepressible, and giggling again. “Her mother, Mrs. Ringold, is beloved for the same virtues that endears Belle to us girls. Or, do I say ‘we girls’?”

“You may say what you please—grammatically,” replied Jessie, smiling again. “It is vacation, and even Miss Seymour has gone away. However, I suppose we should not criticise Belle’s mother.”

“Dear me, honey,” groaned Amy. “You are so good you make me ache. If Belle had spoken as nastily to me as she did to you, I would positively hate her and all her relatives.”

“Look!” murmured Jessie Norwood suddenly. It was evident that she had not given much attention to her chum.

“Look! I thought from the way the radio sounded last evening that the aerial was twisted.”

They were now in sight of the Norwood place, which was one of the show places of Roselawn. At one side an opening in the trees gave a view of Lake Monenset. Across the broad boulevard from the automobile entrance to the Norwood grounds, set upon another terraced lawn, was the Drew house, where Amy lived with her parents and her brother, Darrington Drew, when he was at home. The girls were high school pupils, but Darrington had just finished his first year at Yale.

Amy, staring in the direction her chum pointed, between the Norwood house and a tower at one side, shook her head with mock sadness.

“I really do believe, Jess,” said she, “that there is something in the air besides static. There must be imps that twist those wires. You know it isn’t a week since we lowered the whole thing and took the twists out.”

“I don’t suppose we really have more trouble with our radio than other amateurs. Come on, Amy! Let’s get into our working togs and do a good job while we are about it.”

“All right,” agreed Amy. “Lucky I left my radio suit over here.”

“Your what?” asked her chum, laughing, as the two ran up the veranda steps.

“Radio suit,” repeated Amy seriously. “Those overalls were once our farmerette costumes; but the war is over and the sword is beaten into a plowshare, and our farmerette overalls have become radio rigging suits. Whew! Don’t go so fast, Jess. I can’t climb stairs and talk at the same time.”

In Jessie’s bedroom the two girls changed to the overall suits Amy had mentioned. Young as Jessie Norwood was, she had a suite of rooms to herself. In the long sitting room was her radio cabinet, a much better set than the ordinary house instrument. It had a two-step amplifier and a horn, but there were the usual headphones as well.

“That concert is due right now,” Jessie said, coming out into the big room. “Let us see how it sounds before we lower the aerial. It may have been partly static last night.”

She opened the receiving switch and fastened on the head harness. Amy came over and sat down, likewise affixing one set of the phones. Jessie tuned the machine with practised hand. At first the chattering noises in the air meant nothing intelligible.

“But it’s awfully loud,” murmured the puzzled Amy. “Why, Jess! I never heard your set so loud.”

“Goodness! That isn’t radio,” Jessie declared suddenly.

“Wha-a-at?” drawled the puzzled Amy.

“That’s an airplane!” cried Jessie. “It must be coming right this way.”

“Oh! Over the house!” gasped her chum. “It’s zooming, Jess! Look!”

She tore the phone-tabs from her ears and darted to the window. Jessie could see out from where she sat. The noise of the aeroplane grew louder.

It was swooping so low that involuntarily the girls screamed.

“It—it will hit the house!” gasped Jessie.

“What can he be thinking of?” Amy demanded in equal amazement. “He is swooping so low——”

In seeming recklessness the aviator volplaned downward. Suddenly the roaring of the engine passed. If the pilot did not manage his controls within a dozen seconds in a way to shoot the plane upward again, there must surely be a catastrophe.

Jessie left her seat at the radio and thrust her head and shoulders out of the open window beside her chum. The nose of the plane continued to slant downward. The girls screamed again, for a wing of the plane struck the roof of the tower to which the farther end of the radio aerial was fastened.

“He’ll be killed!” shrieked Jessie.

The plane seemed about to turn turtle. It crashed against the radio antenna and tore it from its fastenings. Then with a deafening crash the machine landed on the lawn, utterly wrecking one of the big rose gardens.

What had become of the reckless pilot the two girls at the window could not see.