"But you won't be here in a few weeks," sighed Elsa, "and besides I want to communicate by wireless right away."
"The only way to do that," said Alec, "is to have a wireless telephone. But I don't have the instruments. They cost more than a wireless telegraph set, too."
"What would you use?" asked Elsa.
"If I just had a good storage battery instead of these dry cells, a V. T. socket and bulb, some B batteries and a telephone block to add to the instruments I already have, we could receive wireless telephone messages O. K. And it wouldn't take very much additional equipment for us to be able to send wireless telephone messages. Some day when I have the time and the money, I'm going to make and buy a complete outfit. With that, I can hold a conversation with any one else who has an outfit within range."
"Wouldn't that be wonderful!" cried Elsa. "Just to think of it! If I had an outfit here and you had one on the Bertha B we could talk to each other no matter where you were, whether you were tied up at your pier or out on the Bay! It would be wonderful."
When Alec looked at the bright face before him, with the flashing, blue eyes, pink cheeks, red lips, and curly brown hair, he, too, thought it would be wonderful. He also thought it would be worth quite as much as some of the dollars he might earn and save. Very quickly he decided that he could wait a few hours longer than he had expected for his ideal oyster-boat, and put those hours into the making of some wireless telephone sets. Of course they wouldn't look as nice as store goods, but they would be quite as effective; and when he and Elsa were talking to each other through miles of space and over leagues of tumbling water, he knew neither one would remember or care about the looks of their instruments. What they would be concerned about would be instruments that talked. That, he suddenly thought, was just what the shipper wanted and the Bertha B's captain wanted, and everybody else wanted—dependability, whether in men or instruments. It wasn't the varnish on the outside that made a man or a wireless instrument worth while. It was the quality of performance that came out of that man or instrument.
Alec had almost fallen into a day-dream when he was recalled by Elsa's voice. "Dad's crazy about music, you know, and nobody in the family knows one note from another. He promised me a fine piano on my next birthday if I'd learn to play it, but I don't want the old piano. I'm going to ask him to get me a wireless telephone set instead."
"If you get it," said Alec, "I'll make and buy the pieces I need to convert this outfit into a first-class telephone set. Then we'll be fixed. If your father won't buy you the set, then I'll make all the pieces I can for you, and we can manage to buy what is lacking. You know a fellow can make almost everything except the receivers and the battery."
In one respect Elsa was like Captain Bagley. To think was to act. No sooner had she decided to ask for a wireless telephone set than she made her request. She came back with a long face. Her father would none of it.
Alec became thoughtful. "If I just had those few pieces I need to add to this set," he said, "I believe I could make your father change his mind in regard to the matter."