But it was a high tide while the feast lasted—a sweeping tide race of fun and laughter, joke and story.
“We might have had a concert up here,” remarked young Treff, when he was disposing very appreciatively of his last biscuit, the biscuit sneered at in its doughboy day, “we might have had the ghost of a concert up here—if only you had brought that—that talisman ring up with you.” He looked down at Pemrose’s right forefinger, without the insignia of her father’s genius. “Humph! when it comes to radio, you’re the ‘Nello’.”
“‘Wireless’ for winner, eh?” laughed the girl. “Somehow, I don’t think you, really, believe that I can get any results with the witch-ring, at all,” laughingly. “And I can! I can! Up here, we’d be too far from any strong sending station I’m afraid. A five-mile radius is about my limit, even for dot an’ dash—for any faint little gleamings of speech or song it must be nearer—” the black eyebrows went up over the rapt blue eyes—“and then—then it’s a whisper, seems to come from the other side of the world, or—or from the farthest little blinking star,” dreamily. “But Una—Una and I did—the morning we started—pick up something, just the faintest little ‘queak’,”—half-laughingly—“singing ‘queak’—but we made words out of it; didn’t we?” She glanced flutteringly at her friend.
“Awfully funny what you do pick up, at times,” said Treff, “from all the hotchpotch, all the stuff, broadcasted, shot out into the air, sometimes by amateurs not licensed to broadcast—but who do it, just the same. I cut in on some ‘queaky’ singing myself, a few nights ago.” He locked his brown hands at the memory, looking down from the Balcony ledge. “Some honey-head—radio bug—amateur, I guess, was shooting off something about ‘dewy flowers’—as well as I could get it—and ‘holding’ somebody ‘in a hand—by the hand.’ Now, what little girl....” The brown speck winked.
“Oh! go on—was there any more?” breathed Pemrose gasping—and she dared not look at Una.
“Oh! I kept getting snatches of the same ‘blarney’, whenever I could blank out other sounds.... I’ve rigged up a pretty powerful set at our camp, you know—wire enough to send a message to Mars.” He kicked a stone down the ledge.
“Go—on!” There was a queer little tickling in Pemrose’s throat.
“Well! later—later it seemed as if the ‘bug’ was blowing about radio: I caught the word ‘Air’ distinctly; and something about:
... ‘Waves you cannot see,
Bring you, at last—nearer to me.’