Joe gazed at it again for a moment, and then let his eyes travel across the little office to where red-headed, freckle-faced, big-hearted and impetuous Jerry Macklin was rapping away at another typewriter, and, two feet away from Jerry, "Slim" Goodwin, "one-hundred-and-seventy pounds in his stockinged feet, and five-feet-four in his gym suit," was working the telegraph key with a pudgy hand.
"Jerry!" he called. "Oh, Slim! Come over here a moment, both of you. I want to show you something."
Jerry immediately ceased typewriting, but Slim was reluctant to release the telegraph key. However, as Joe began folding the paper in such a way that only the last sentence showed, their aroused curiosity brought both of them to his side.
"Read that," said Joe, trying to suppress the quiver in his voice, and holding the paper up before them. "Read it carefully."
One lad on either side of him, they hung over Joe's shoulder and followed his bidding.
"Right!" shouted Jerry, as he came to the last word. "Joe, you're a wizard, and what you've written there is the truth."
"Ain't it—I mean isn't it?" added the delicate Slim Goodwin, and, partly to hide his grammatical error, but mostly to express his enthusiasm, he gave Joe a one-hundred-and-seventy-pound whack on the back that sent him sliding out of the chair and half way under the typewriter table.
"Say!" Joe remonstrated. But just then Philip Burton, telegraph operator and genial good friend of all three of the lads, bustled into the room, a sheaf of yellow telegrams in his hand.
"What's all the excitement?" he asked, striding toward the typewriter just left by Jerry.
"Why," explained Slim, "Joe's just done something that means something."