“Do you think the sun has affected his brain?” asked Herb, with affected anxiety.
“It might have, if he had any brain to be affected,” replied Joe, in the same strain.
“Let us in on it, Jimmy,” pleaded Bob. “Don’t be selfish and keep it all to yourself.”
“Why, you thick heads,” replied Jimmy, with more force than politeness, “don’t you know that you don’t have to have a lightning arrester with a loop aerial?”
There was a moment’s silence while they let this sink in, and then a sheepish grin stole into their faces.
“Sure enough,” owned up Bob. “I knew that too, but I had forgotten it for the time. I was thinking of the outdoor aerial. Of course on an indoor aerial there’s no need of a lightning arrester. Jimmy, I take off my hat to you. As the leader of the lynching party said to the widow, 17 after they had lynched the wrong man, the joke’s on us.”
“I guess that evens things up,” crowed Jimmy gleefully, his usual good-humor completely restored. “To think of all that waste of good chin music over nothing,” he added mockingly.
“Don’t rub it in,” admonished Joe. “We’ll admit that we’re boobs and let it go at that. Serves us right for thinking of working on a day like this, anyway. Those people out there have the right idea,” he continued, pointing to a party in a rowboat some distance out from the shore.
“Wish we were out there with them,” remarked Herb enviously, as his eyes followed the boat, which had in it three persons, two boys and a girl.
“A sailboat would be good enough for me,” put in Jimmy. “Rowing is too much like work.”