“You are as lucid as usual,” confessed her chum. Then she went on to explain: “I have found rope enough in the barn for our purpose – new rope. We will attach the end of the aerial wires with the rope to the roof of the old tower. It will enable us to make the far end of the aerials higher than my window – you see?”
“Necessary point; I observe. Go ahead, Miss Seymour.”
“Please don’t call me ‘Miss Seymour,’” objected Jessie, frowning. “For the poor thing has a wart on her nose.”
“No use at all there. Not even as a collar-button,” declared Amy. “All right; you are not Miss Seymour. And, come to think of it, I wonder if it was Miss Seymour I was thinking of last night when I thought that woman driving the kidnappers’ car looked like somebody I knew? Do you think–?”
“Oh! That horrid woman! I don’t dislike Miss Seymour, you know, Amy, even if she does teach English. I think she is almost handsome beside that motor-car driver. Yes, I do.”
“Wart and all?” murmured Amy.
But they were both too deeply interested in the radio to linger long on other matters. They laid out the work for the next morning, but did nothing practical toward erecting the wires and attendant parts that day. Amy came over immediately after breakfast, dressed in her farmerette costume, which was, in truth, a very practical suit in which to work.
The girls even refused the help of the gardener. He said they would be unable to raise the heavy ladder to the tower window; and that was a fact.
“All right,” said the practical Jessie, “then we won’t use the ladder.”
“My! I am not tall enough to reach the things up to you from the ground, Jess,” drawled Amy.
“Silly!” laughed her friend. “I am going up there to the top window in the tower. I can stand on the window sill and drive in the hook, and hang the aerial from there. See! We’ve got it all fixed on the ground here. I’ll haul it up with another rope. You stay down here and tie it on. You’ll see.”
“Well, don’t fall,” advised Amy. “The ground is hard.”
It had been no easy matter for the two girls to construct their aerial. The wire persisted in getting twisted and they had all they could do to keep it from kinking. Then, too, they wanted to fasten the porcelain insulators just right and had to consult one of the books several times. Then there came more trouble over the lead-in wire, which should have been soldered to the aerial but was only twisted tight instead.
The girls worked all the forenoon. When one end of the aerial was attached properly to the tower, Amy ran in and upstairs to her chum’s room and dropped a length of rope from one of the windows. Jessie came down from her perch and attached the house-end of the aerial to the rope. When Amy had the latter hauled up and fastened to a hook driven into the outside frame of Jessie’s window, the antenna was complete.
At that (and it sounds easy, but isn’t) they got it twisted and had to lower the house-end of the aerial again. While they were thus engaged, a taxi-cab stopped out in front. Amy, leaning from her chum’s window, almost fell out in her sudden excitement.
“Oh, Jess! They’ve come!” she shouted.
“What do you mean?” demanded Jessie. “We were not expecting anybody, were we?”
“You weren’t, but I was. I forgot to tell you,” cried Amy. “They just went around Long Island and came up the East River and through Hell Gate and got a mooring at the Yacht Club, off City Island.”
“Who are you talking about?” gasped her chum, wonderingly.
“Darry–”
“Darry!” ejaculated Jessie with mixed emotions. She glanced down at her overalls. She was old enough to want to look her best when Darrington Drew was on the scene. “Darry!” she murmured again.
“Yes. And Burd Alling. They telephoned early this morning. But I forgot. Here they come, Jess!”
Jessie Norwood turned rather slowly to look. She felt a strong desire to run into the house and make a quick change of costume.
CHAPTER V
THE FRECKLE-FACED GIRL
Of the two young fellows hurrying in from the boulevard one was tall and slim and dark; the other was stocky – almost plump, in fact – and sandy of complexion, with sharp, twinkling pond-blue eyes. Burdwell Alling’s eyes were truly the only handsome feature he possessed. But he had a wonderfully sweet disposition.
Darry Drew was one of those quiet, gentlemanly fellows, who seem rather too sober for their years. Yet he possessed humor enough, and there certainly was no primness about him. It was he who hailed Jessie on the ground and Amy leaning out of the window above:
“I say, fellows! Have you seen a couple of young ladies around here who have just finished their junior year at the New Melford High with flying colors? We expected to find them sitting high and dry on the front porch, ready to receive company.”
“Sure we did,” added Burd Alling. “They have taken the highest degree in Prunes and Prisms and have been commended by their instructors for excellent deportment. And among all the calicos, they are supposed to take the bun as prudes.”
Amy actually almost fell out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. “A pair of smarties,” she scoffed. “Come home and fret our ears with your college slang. How dare you!”
“I declare! Is that Miss Amy Drew?” demanded Burd, sticking a half dollar in his eye like a monocle and apparently observing Amy for the first time.
“It is not,” said Amy sharply. “Brush by! I don’t speak to strange young men.”
But Darry had come to Jessie and shaken hands. If she flushed self-consciously, it only improved her looks.
“Awfully glad to see you, Jess,” the tall young fellow said.
“It’s nice to have you home again, Darry,” she returned.
Amy ran down again then, in her usual harum-scarum fashion, and the conversation became general. How had the girls finished their high-school year? And how had the boys managed to stay a whole year at Yale without being asked to leave for the good of the undergraduate body?
Was the Marigold a real yacht, or just a row-boat with a kicker behind? And what were the girls doing in their present fetching costumes?
“The wires!” cried Burd. “Is it a trapeze? Are we to have a summer circus in Roselawn?”
“We shall have if you remain around here,” was Amy’s saucy reply. “But yon is no trapeze, I’d have you know.”
“A slack wire? Who walks it – you or Jess?”
“Aw, Burd!” ejaculated Darry. “It’s radio. Don’t you recognize an aerial when you see it?”
“You have a fine ground connection,” scoffed Burd.
“Don’t you worry about us,” Jessie took heart to say. “We know just what to do. Go upstairs again, Amy, and haul up this end of the contraption. I’ve got it untwisted.”
A little later, when the aerial was secure and Jessie went practically to work affixing the ground connection, Darrington Drew said:
“Why, I believe you girls do know what you are about.”
“Don’t you suppose we girls know anything at all, Darry?” demanded his sister from overhead. “You boys have very little on us.”
“Don’t even want us to help you?” handsome Darry asked, grinning up at her.
“Not unless you approach the matter with the proper spirit,” Jessie put in. “No lofty, high-and-mighty way goes with us girls. We can be met