So the boys showed them how to fit the head-phones, not using the loudspeaker they had made from the phonograph horn, and adjusted the tuning apparatus to the proper wave length, and the girls answered to the thrill of catching music magically from the ether just as the boys had done on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when their first concert had reached them over the wires of their first receiving set. Crude it seemed to them now in the light of later improvements, but an instrument of magic it had been to them that night.
No wonder that the boys felt a warm and real friendship for the Salper girls—and Mrs. Salper, too—a friendship that would have been surprising, considering the shortness of their acquaintance, had it not been that they were all radio fans, dyed in the wool.
So quickly did the time fly that Mrs. Salper was amazed and apologetic when she found how long they had lingered.
“We must hurry!” she exclaimed, starting toward the door, the girls reluctantly following. “Your father will surely think we are all lost in a snowdrift.”
“Which two of us came very near being,” added Edna, with a laugh.
“Don’t joke about it,” said Ruth, with a shiver. “I must say being buried in a snowdrift wasn’t very pleasant—while it lasted.”
The radio boys insisted upon accompanying the Salpers home, explaining that they could show them the shortest path. Gaily they started out and before they had reached the Salper place the friendship which had begun the evening of the concert with their mutual interest in radio, became steadily stronger.
It was plain that, besides being grateful to them for having come to the help of the girls, Mrs. Salper liked the boys for their own sakes.
When they reached the house she begged them to come in with her so that Mr. Salper might have the opportunity of thanking them for their kindness.
The boys skillfully avoided accepting this invitation by pointing out that it was getting late and the path would be hard to find in the dusk.