"Well, go ahead and see what you can do, Son. If you can really get the thing working, so much the better."
The next day Jimmy lost no time in hunting up his friends and telling them of his good fortune. He found that the others had not been far behind him in procuring the necessary cash. That afternoon they all descended on the hardware store, whose proprietor had laid in a stock of the materials that would be likely to be needed in the construction of simple radio outfits. The hardware merchant was glad to see them, but somewhat surprised also.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed, when he learned what the boys had come for. "When that salesman from New York talked me into stocking up with all that stuff, I never thought I'd get a sale for it in the next ten years. And now here's all you youngsters coming in here after it with money in your fists."
"Yes, and you'd better lay in a whole lot more of it, Dave," said Bob Layton. "It won't be long before everybody in this town will be wanting a wireless radio outfit."
"Well, I guess I've got enough in the store now to start you fellows on your way," said Dave Slocum, the proprietor. "Now, what all do you need?"
There followed a time of much consultation and anxious questioning before all the enthusiastic young experimenters were satisfied that they were getting the most useful things their limited amount of capital would buy. Dave Slocum sold more feet of copper wire in that one afternoon than he had in the previous five years, not to mention insulators, resistance wire, detectors, head sets, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to the beginner. At last all the various purchases were tied into neat bundles, and the excited boys swarmed out into the street.
"Let's go to my house and get started right away," proposed Bob. "It will be quite a job to get the aerial strung, and the sooner we do it the better it will suit me."
The others were of the same mind, and they made the distance to the Layton home "on the jump" with Jimmy puffing valiantly in the rear in a desperate endeavor to keep up with his more active comrades.
"Gee!" he exclaimed, staggering up the steps to the cool veranda, "you fellows must think I'm a candidate for Marathon runner at the next Olympic games, the way you hit it up coming here."
"I don't know about the Marathon race," said Joe, "but I do think we could enter you in the long distance pie-eating contest, without having any doubts of your winning away out in front of the field."