“It is quite wonderful how much you young people have learned about radio—so much more than I had any idea,” said the school teacher. “Of course you can write a little prose essay, Jessie, get it by heart, and repeat it at each session in the tent, if you feel timid about giving an off-hand talk on the subject.”
“You can do it if you only think you can, Jessie,” said her mother, smiling. “I am sure I have a very smart daughter.”
“Oh, now, Momsy! If they should laugh at me——”
“Don’t give them a chance to laugh, dear. Make your talk so interesting and informative that they can’t laugh.”
Thus encouraged, Jessie spent all the forenoon of the Fourth shut up in her own room making ready for the afternoon and evening. She had already made a careful schedule of the broadcasting done by all the stations within reach of her fine radio set, and found that it was possible, by tuning her instrument to the wave lengths of different stations, to get something interesting into every hour from two o’clock on until eleven.
Naturally, some of the entertainments would be more interesting or amusing than others; but as New Melford people for the most part were as yet unfamiliar with radio, almost anything out of the air would seem curious and entertaining.
“Besides,” Burd Alling said in comment on this, “for a good cause we are all ready and willing to be bunkoed a little.”
“Let me tell you, Mr. Smarty,” said Amy, “that Jessie’s lecture is well worth the price of admission alone. Never mind the radio entertainment.”
“I’ll come to hear it every time,” agreed Burd. “You can’t scare me!”
The radio had been carefully tried out in the tent the evening before. The boys had got the market reports and the early baseball scores out of the air on Fourth of July morning, before the bazaar opened. When Jesse came out after luncheon to take charge of the radio tent, she felt that she was letter perfect in the “talk” she had arranged to introduce each session of the wireless entertainment.