"Speed! You won't make any speed at all—at least not at first, so do not hope or expect to. If you even get the words correctly you will be going some," sniffed Walter. "Still, I guess you need not worry for the present about receiving or sending messages for Bob will give you a lot to think about before that. As for the Morse code, you may not meet it for weeks."
"What do you mean?" Dick inquired.
"Oh, Bob will get right down to brass tacks at the start and find out what you know about electricity and wireless anyway. That is the way he did to me when he tutored me in Latin. He wasn't content with just translating Caesar but must needs splash right into Roman history and make me hunt up everything I could find about the Goths and the rest of those heathen tribes. Gee, but he made me sweat! He will do that with you and your wireless. If you think you are going to begin taking messages in code you don't know Bob."
Having delivered himself of these brotherly appreciations His Highness walked away, leaving Dick to ponder on the joyous prospects they contained. His sinister prediction Richard Crowninshield soon found to be true. Thorough was no name for Bob King. Before a week had passed Dick whimsically remarked to his father that it must be a task to Bob to swim on the top of the sea without diving down with a spy glass and examining every particle that was on the ocean's bottom. The fact that the new tutor never dipped into any subject but instead explored it greatly delighted Mr. Crowninshield.
"I shouldn't mind letting that young chap tutor me a little," observed he half jestingly to his wife. "I am as vague as a fog when it comes to this wireless business. I should get a lot of information if I listened in on Dick's lessons."
The words, idly spoken, much to the amusement of all became a reality. After drifting in to the first talk Mr. Crowninshield came to the second lesson and from then on he became a regular pupil.
"You needn't be afraid I have come here to criticize," explained he with appealing simplicity. "I'm green as grass and have come to learn."
"It is just that you have not had the time to take up radio, sir," was Bob's modest answer. "We all have our specialties."
"That's right," agreed the capitalist. "Sometimes I fall to wondering whether it is better to know something about everything or everything about something."
"To know something about everything would be spreading it pretty thin, I am afraid," was Bob's characteristic reply.