“Silly,” crooned Jessie, patting her chum on the cheek. “Let’s go. We’ll walk. Wait till I run and see if Momsy doesn’t want something from down town.”
“We won’t ask Mrs. Drew that question, for she will be pretty sure to want a dozen things, and I refuse—positively—to be a dray horse. I ‘have drew’ more than my share from the stores already. Cyprian in the car can run the dear, forgetful lady’s errands.”
Jessie scarcely listened to this. She ran in and ran out again. She was smiling.
“Momsy says all she wants is two George Washington sundaes, to be brought home in two separate parcels, one blonde and one brunette,” 9 and she held up half a dollar before Amy’s eyes.
“Your mother, as I have always said, Jess, is of the salt of the earth. And she is well sugared, too. Let me carry the half dollar, honey. You’ll swallow it, or lose it, or something. Aren’t to be trusted yet with money,” and Amy marched down the steps in the lead.
She always took the lead, and usually acted as though she were the moving spirit of the pair. But, really, Jessie Norwood was the more practical, and it was usually her initiative that started the chums on a new thing and always her “sticktoitiveness” that carried them through to the end.
Bonwit Boulevard, beautifully laid out, shaded with elms, with a grass path in the middle, two oiled drives, and with a bridle path on one side, was one of the finest highways in the state. At this hour of the afternoon, before the return rush of the auto-commuters from the city, the road was almost empty.
The chums chatted of many things as they went along. But Jessie came back each time to radio. She had been very much interested in the wonder of it and in the possibility of rigging the necessary aerials and setting up a receiving set at her own house.
“We can get the books to tell us how to do it, and we can buy the wire for the antenna to-day,” she said. 10
“‘Antenna’! Is it an insect?” demanded Amy. “Sounds crawly.”