“I’m sure we’ll do our share,” said Bob. “We’ll be glad to give the concert, and if people shouldn’t come to it, that wouldn’t be our fault.”
“That will be excellent then,” said Mrs. Fennington. “I’ll speak to some of the other ladies about it, and we’ll set a date and make all the arrangements.”
“That plan of mother’s reminds me of something I was reading about the other day,” said Herb, after Mrs. Fennington had left the room. “It was in connection with that drive they were making for the disabled war veterans. Do you remember the ‘flying parson’ that won the transcontinental air race a couple of years ago? Well, he has a radio attached to his airplane and he arranged to have an opera singer give a concert over it. She sat in the plane and sang, and her voice was heard over a radius of five hundred miles. Then the parson gave a short, red-hot talk in behalf of the soldiers, and thousands of people heard about the drive that wouldn’t have known of it otherwise. They say that money poured into headquarters by mail during the next few days.”
“Good stuff!” exclaimed Bob. “Our work will be on a smaller scale, but the spirit will be there just the same, and I bet our old radio will rake in a heap of coin for the sanitarium.”
[CHAPTER XX—THE RADIO CONCERT]
“When do we give the concert, Herb?” asked Bob at breakfast the next morning.
“Mother isn’t quite sure yet,” replied Herb to Bob’s question. “Not until she consults with some of the others, anyway. But she thinks that a week from to-night will be all right. Guess one night’s the same as another as far as we are concerned.”
As a matter of fact, the projected concert was scheduled several days sooner than Herb had predicted, being set for the ensuing Saturday night, so as to get as many of the week-end visitors as possible. Tickets to the affair sold well, and from the first it became evident that there would be a large attendance. People were only too glad to come, both for the sake of hearing good music and to know that they were contributing to a worthy charity. The boys, as the volume of sales increased, realized that it was up to them to see that the visitors should have the worth of their money and they went over the set with a “fine-tooth comb,” to use Herb’s expression, in order to make sure that every part of it was in fine working order.
“We’ll have to test everything out pretty thoroughly,” remarked Bob, that Saturday morning. “We’d never hear the last of it if anything went wrong to-night.”
“You bet!” said Joe. “We’ve got to have everything in apple-pie order.”