“I guess you’d better look again, Miss Jessie,” declared the freckled child with her old-fashioned manner. “I know I never touched nothing to bring it away. And I didn’t see any of the other kids do it.”
“They might not have told you,” suggested Amy.
“What? Charlie Foley and the Costello twins and Monty Shannon? Huh! They wouldn’t dare try to hide anything from me. Ain’t I Spotted Snake, the Witch?” and she laughed elfishly. “They can’t hide anything from me.”
“Perhaps they hid this from you,” Amy observed.
But Jessie said nothing more at the time. They came to the place where Montmorency Shannon and two of the smaller boys were just raising the aerial between the Shannon chimney and the Dugan barn roof. Monty was a rather goodlooking boy of fourteen with a shock of rusty hair. His eyes were sharp, and blue, and had a twinkle in them.
Soon after Jessie began to talk with him she discovered that he knew quite as much about radio telephony as she did herself. He had never had a set and he did not own one now.
“But I’m going to get this aerial up. Then I’ll be ready for the set—when I can get it.”
“But how do you purpose getting it?” Amy asked. “They cost quite a lot of money.”
“I know. The set I want costs fifteen dollars,” Monty declared. “Maybe it will begin to rain radio sets when I’m ready for mine. I’m going to set out a big tub to catch ’em, if it clouds over.”
This amused Amy, but Henrietta thought it was impolite.