Naturally, the appeal was much less strong to the members of their families, when with considerable mental misgivings the boys opened up the subject to them, after having enjoined them to strict secrecy as far as outsiders were concerned.
There was a chorus of expostulations and objections, to all of which the boys made answer as best they could. But the strongest arguments lay in the way they had come through the perilous adventures they had previously undergone. Their folks had to admit that in these they had shown qualities of coolness and good judgment, in addition to courage, that had extricated them from all their difficulties. Why was it not reasonable to believe that the same qualities would stand them in good stead in their present venture?
In the end, Phil and Dick prevailed, as they had felt sure that they would, although the consent was a grudging one. Tom had a harder task, as his father was in Chicago, and their talk had to be over the radio, concerning which the elder Hadley was as ardent a “fan” as the son himself. They had a code of their own, but naturally even with that the talk had to be a guarded one, and dealt with the matter in a much more general way than would have been the case in a personal talk, where Tom could have brought his big guns to bear. The result was that Tom got a qualified consent, which was not to be regarded as final however, until the elder Hadley had received full details in a letter which Tom was to write to him at once.
“So far, so good,” remarked Tom, at the end of the struggle, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow. “Now I’ll have to give my natural eloquence a chance and spread it all over my letter. Just wait till you see that letter. It’s going to be a cuckoo. But I haven’t any doubt as to how it will turn out. Dad’s a good sport, and he’s taken chances himself all his life. I’ll bet he’d like to be in on this himself.”
Phil in the meantime had been writing to Steve, laying the matter before him, and enjoining him by all that was good to let him have an answer in twenty-four hours.
“Humph!” sniffed Dick, as he glanced over Phil’s shoulder. “Twenty-four hours! He’ll telegraph an answer in five minutes after he reads the letter. I know Steve.”
“I guess you’re about right,” smiled Phil. “You’ve got the old boy pretty well sized up.”
There was so much to do that day that the time passed as though on wings, and in the evening, in accordance with arrangements made over the telephone, Benton came up again to get their final word on the matter.
“No need to ask though,” he remarked, when the first greetings were over. “I can see that there are no cold feet in this crowd.”
“Warm as toast,” laughed Phil. “There was considerable chilliness about the pedal extremities of our folks though. We had to talk until we were hoarse. We carried our point though, and as far as Dick and I are concerned the matter’s a go. Tom’s been talking over the radio and the thing’s still in the air, but Tom considers it as good as settled. I’ve written to Steve too, and we expect to get an answer tomorrow by telegraph.”