"Well, start up the old coffee mill, then," said Herb. "If we can get the wire on as slick as we did the paper, it won't be half bad."
But the wire was a more difficult thing to work, as they soon found. It required the greatest care to get the wire to lie smooth and close without any space between coils. More than once they had to unwind several coils and rewind them before they finally got the whole core wound in a satisfactory manner. But at last it was finished, all coils wound smooth and close, and the boys gazed at it with pardonable pride.
"That doesn't look as bad as it might, does it?" said Bob.
"I should say not!" exclaimed Joe. "The last time I was in New York I saw a coil like that in an electrical store window. I didn't know then what it was for, but as far as I can remember, it didn't look much better than this one."
"We probably couldn't have made as good a job of it if Bob hadn't had that lathe," said Herb.
"Well, I don't know," said Bob. "It would have taken us longer, but I think we could have done it about as well in the end. Now that we've got the core wound, we'll have to mount it with a couple of sliding contacts, but I guess we'd better not try to do anything more to-night. It's getting pretty late. And, besides, mother said she'd leave an apple pie and some milk in the ice box, and I'm beginning to feel as though that would taste pretty good."
CHAPTER X
A STEALTHY RASCAL
"Did you really say pie, Bob?" asked Jimmy in a rapturous voice.
"And apple pie at that? Or was it all only a beautiful dream?"
"There's only one way to find out, and that's to go and see," said Bob. "Last man up gets the smallest piece," and he made a dash for the stairs, closely followed by the others. Poor Jimmy, in spite of a surprising burst of speed on his part, was the last one up, and arrived out of breath, but ready to argue against Bob's dictum.