“You could do it all right enough, Spouter,” answered Randy. “So far as I know, you were never at a loss for words when talking.”
“You could talk a jury right into doing whatever you wanted,” added Andy merrily. “All you’d have to do would be to keep on spouting until they wanted their dinner or their supper, or wanted to retire for the night, and then you’d have ’em promising you anything, if only you’d let up.”
“Humph!” snorted Spouter. “A fine opinion you have of my oratorical ability! Of course I might use an extended argument, but it would be in strict accordance with the facts of the case. I’d lay down a plain proposition, then go into the various and clinching particulars, and after that——”
“Please, Spouter, don’t start so early in the morning,” pleaded Randy, for he as well as the others knew that if their chum ever got going he would not stop talking for a long while. He had not been nicknamed “Spouter” for nothing.
As had been said, Gif was something of an expert when it came to radio, and soon he located the trouble, both in the radio itself and in the way the aërial had been put up. He and Jack, by the aid of a long ladder manipulated by all of the crowd, managed to get the aërial properly fastened and then the radio was tried out on a distant station and found to work to perfection.
Presently Fred and May came back and the other girls came downstairs, and then the whole crowd took a walk over to the new Stevenson estate. Here the foundations had been put down for the new building and the carpenters were ready to erect the first of the big timbers.
“But dad wrote that the carpenters have another job to finish first,” said Ruth; “so they won’t do any more here for several weeks. Then they’re going at it and keep going until it’s finished.”
Ruth had studied the blue prints thoroughly, and it was not without considerable pride that she explained how the house was to look when finished and where the various rooms were to be located.
“My room will be right over here on this end, and will have a nice sleeping porch attached,” she said. “Won’t it be a lovely view? I’ll be able to see for miles and miles.”
“And you’ll be able to swallow ozone by the bushel and the ton,” added Andy, with a grin.