“Do you know, fellows,” remarked Bob, as he was talking with his friends a few days later, “I’ve been thinking——”
“Bob’s been thinking!” cried Herb. “Fire the cannon, ring the bells, hang out the flags. Bob’s been thinking!”
“Are you sure it’s that, or have you only been thinking that you’ve been thinking?” grinned Joe.
“When did it attack you first?” asked Jimmy, with great solicitude. “And where does it hurt you worst? Are you taking anything for it? You don’t want to let it go too long, Bob. I knew a fellow who had that same trouble and didn’t think it was worth while to send for a doctor, and before he knew it——”
Bob made a dive at him that Jimmy adroitly ducked, losing nothing but his hat in the process.
“Listen to me, you boneheads,” Bob commanded, “and I’ll try to get down on the same level with your feeble intelligence. I’ve been thinking that perhaps we can better our set still more in the matter of aerials.”
“Alexander always looking for new worlds to conquer,” murmured Joe. “We nearly got killed the last time we bettered our aerial. What’s the matter with the umbrella type? I thought that was the ne plus ultra, the sine qua non, the—the——”
“The e pluribus unum,” Herb helped him out, “the hoc propter quod, the hic jacet, the requiescat in pace, the——”
At this point his hat followed Jimmy’s.
“The umbrella kind is good, all right,” admitted Bob; “and, for that matter, I’m not dead sure that it isn’t the best. It certainly gave us fine results in the baseball game on Saturday. But there’s nothing so good that there may not be something better, and I thought it might be well to rig up a loop some day and try it out. If it works as well or better than the umbrella, we may use it when we come to set up our radio at Ocean Point.”