“’Tis a witch she certainly is,” declared Mrs. Foley. “She’s bewitched them all, so she has. But I’m lost widout her, meself. When a woman has six – and them all boys – and a man that drinks – ”
This statement of her personal affairs had been so often heard by the three girls that they all tried to sidetrack Mrs. Foley’s complaint. It was Jessie, however, who advanced a really good reason for getting out of the Foley house.
“I promised Monty Shannon I would look at his radio set,” she said, jumping up. “You will excuse us for a little, Mrs. Foley? You are not going back to Stratfordtown at once, Bertha?”
“Before long. I have only hired the car for the forenoon. The man has another job this afternoon. And I must find that Henrietta again,” for the freckle-faced little girl was as lively, so Amy said, as a water-bug – “one of those skimmery things with long legs that dart along the surface of the water.”
The trio went out and across the cinder-covered yard to the Shannon house. The immediate surroundings of Dogtown were squalid, although its site upon the edge of Lake Mononset might have been made very pleasant indeed.
“If these boys like Monty Shannon and some of the girls stay at home when they grow up they surely will improve the looks of the village,” Jessie had said. “For Monty and his kind are altogether too smart not to want to live as other people do.”
“You’ve said it,” agreed Amy, with enthusiasm. “He is smart. He has a better radio receiver than you have. Wait till you see.”
“How do you know?” asked the surprised Jessie.
“He was telling me about it. You know how often some ‘squeak box,’ or other amateur operator, breaks in on our concerts.”
“We-ell, not so often now,” Jessie said. “I have learned more about tuning and wave-lengths. But, of course, I have only a single circuit crystal receiving set. I have been talking to Dad about getting a better one.”
“Monty will show you,” Amy said with confidence, as they knocked at the Shannon door.
The little cottage was small. Downstairs there were but two rooms. The door gave access to the kitchen, and beyond was the “sitting-room,” of which Monty’s mother was inordinately proud. She was a widow, and helped herself and her children by doing fine laundry work for the wealthy people of New Melford.
From the front room when the girls entered came sounds that they recognized – radio sounds which held their instant attention, although they were merely market reports at that hour in the forenoon.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Bertha Blair said, clasping her hands. “I never can get over the wonder of it.”
“Same here,” Amy declared. “When Jess and I listened to you singing the ‘Will o’ the Wisp’ last night it seemed almost shivery that we should recognize the very tones of your voice out of the air.”
“Huh!” exclaimed Montmorency, grinning. “I got so I know the announcers, too. When that Mr. Blair speaks I know him. Of course, I know Mr. Mark Stratford’s voice, for I’ve talked with him. I wouldn’t have such a fine machine here, only he advised me.”
“Tell me,” Jessie said, “what is the difference between my receiving set and yours, Monty?”
“If you want to hear clearly and keep outside radio out of your machine, use a regenerative radio set with an audion detector. The whole business, Miss Jessie, is in the detector, after all. A regenerative set of this kind is selective enough – that’s the expression Mr. Mark used – to enable any one to tune out all but a few commercial stations. And they don’t often butt in to annoy you. For sure, you’ll kill all the amateur squeak-boxes and other transmission stations of that class.
“Now, I’m going to tune in for Stratfordtown. They are sending the Government weather reports and mother wants to know should she water her tomatoes or depend on a thunderstorm,” and he grinned at Mrs. Shannon, who stood, an awkward but smiling figure, in the doorway between the two rooms.
“’Tis too wonderful a thing for me to understand, at all, at all,” admitted the widow. “However can they tell you out of that machine there is a thunderstorm coming?”
“Listen!” exclaimed the boy eagerly. There was a horn on the set and no need for earphones. He had tuned the market reports out. From the horn came a different voice. But the words the visitors heard had nothing to do with the report on the weather. “What’s the matter?” demanded Monty Shannon. “Listen to this, will you?”
“… she will come home at once. This is serious – a serious call for Bertha Blair.”
“Do you hear that?” almost shrieked Amy Drew. “Why, it must mean you, Bertha!”
CHAPTER VI – CHANGED PLANS
“How ridiculous!” Jessie cried. “That surely cannot mean you, Bertha.”
“Hush!” begged Amy. “It’s uncanny.”
Again the slow voice enunciated: “Bertha Blair will come home at once. This is serious – a serious call for Bertha Blair.”
“Criminy!” shouted Monty Shannon. “I know who that is. It’s Mr. Mark Stratford.”
“He is calling for you, Bertha,” said Jessie. “Can it be possible?”
“Something has happened!” gasped Bertha, starting for the door of the cottage. “Where is that child?”
“Never mind Henrietta. We will take care of her,” Jessie called after the worried girl, wishing to relieve her anxiety.
Bertha ran out of the house, and the next moment the Roselawn girls heard the car start. Bertha was being whisked away to Stratfordtown. The voice of Mark Stratford continued to repeat the call several times. Then he read the weather report, as expected.
“I can tell you one thing,” Jessie said eagerly to her chum and the Shannons. “Mark Stratford does not usually give out the announcements from that station. Now, does he, Monty?”
“No, ma’am, Miss Jessie. Only once in a while.”
“Then something has happened at the Blair house, or to Mr. Blair himself. That is why they send out this call, hoping that somebody down here would get it and tell Bertha.”
“Think! How funny it must feel to hear your name called out of the air in that way,” Amy remarked.
“Why, we had that experience ourselves,” Jessie said. “Don’t you remember? Mark thanked us publicly for finding his watch.”
“But that was not just like this,” replied Amy. “Anyway, there is something unsatisfactory about radio – and always will be – until we can ‘talk back’ as well as receive. See! If Monty had a sending set as well as a receiving, he could have answered Mark Stratford, and told him Bertha had heard the call and was starting home without any delay.”
“I am afraid something really serious has happened,” Jessie said. “Let’s go back home and call up Stratfordtown on the telephone.”
“We’ll take Hen along with us,” agreed Amy. “You said we’d take care of her.”
This the Roselawn girls did. When they set out from Dogtown in their canoe, Henrietta sat amidships. She was delighted to visit the Norwoods. She had stayed over night with Jessie before.
They passed the flotilla of tubs and barrels that the Dogtown children had set afloat. Mrs. Shannon would never see her washtubs again. Meanwhile the Costello twins and Charlie Foley had set out to walk around the lake and recover the big canoe from the place where it had drifted ashore on the other side.
Конец