“Q. S. O. Increase your power, O. M.—Old Man!”
In what had come to be known as the “shack corner” of the cabin on the sidehill—the radio shack—Pemrose Lorry uttered the challenge into the microphone, small mouthpiece, making merry with her father, a hundred miles away.
“Ha! That’s better. Your signals are coming in strong now. I have you tuned O. K.” Yet, still, she fiddled with the knob upon the dial on the face of the radio receiver; the knob which, beginning with zero upon the dial-scale, she had gently turned, varying the capacity of her condenser, the steel plates for storing up current, until she got her wavelength—the wavelength of the distant station sending.
In the hazy, morning sunlight stealing into the mountain camp, the camp upon Mount Pocohosette, seventeen girls and a Guardian watched her, bewitched by this new talking game, as she alternately threw the aërial switch to the receiving side, thus connecting her receiving set to aërial and ground wires, and then to the transmitter, forming a like connection.
“You’re coming in like a ton of bricks now,” she informed her distant father. “I could hear you with the phones on the table,” with a merry wink.
“Radio Amateur, thy middle name is Exaggeration!” laughed the Guardian.
“Always tell the other fellow what he’s doing, not what you’re doing yourself—then, if anything goes wrong, you can blame it on him—even if he is your most blessed Dad ... first principle of radio transmission!” She winked again—the amateur.
“Oh! if I were only—only—mistress of it, as you are.” Lura clasped her hands, her radiant “copper nob” shining like the bronze coils.
“I’m going to give you all a lesson presently, a lesson in radio—transmitting and receiving. But, first, I’m going to ‘parlez-vous’ Dad in code, a little.” The first and second fingers of the girlish amateur’s right hand now attacked the steely telegraph key upon the operating table, as the radio shelf was called, ticking off endless combinations of dots and dashes—a sealed book to most of the girls.
“Goodness! That code is as bad as the Hindenburg line; ’twould be as hard for me to work through it,” panted Lura, whose brother had been a soldier.