“Lucky girl!” said Amy, sighing. “It’s nice to have an uncle who bosses a broadcasting station. But, never mind, Jess, we had fun the time we were on the program. Say! the boys will be home to-morrow.”
“No! Do you mean it?”
“Papa got a wireless. The Marigold now has a real radio telegraph sending and receiving set. Darry says it is great. But, of course, you and I can’t get anything from them because we do not know Morse.”
“Let’s learn!” exclaimed Jessie, excitedly.
“Sometimes when you get your set tuned wrong you hear some of the code. But the telegraph wave-length is much, much longer than the phone lengths. Guess you’d have a job listening in for anything Darry and Burd Ailing would send from that old yacht.”
“We can learn the Morse alphabet, just the same, can’t we?” demanded her chum.
“Now, there you go again!” complained Amy. “Always suggesting something that is work. I don’t want to have to learn a single thing until we go back to school in the fall. Believe me!”
Her emphasis only made Jessie laugh. She adjusted the crystal detector, or cat’s whisker, as the girls called it, and then began to tune the coil until, with the tabs at her ears, she could hear a voice rising out of the void, nearer and nearer, until it seemed speaking directly in her ear:
“With which announcement we begin our evening’s entertainment from the Stratfordtown Station. The first number on the program being——”
“Do you hear that? It is Mr. Blair himself,” whispered Amy eagerly. “And he says——”