"Oh, he first got interested in wireless through the papers and picked up quite a lot of information that way. Later he and his chum Billy Hicks bought a manual and with the help of the physics teacher at the High School they rigged up a homemade receiving apparatus on Billy's grandfather's barn. For a while it wouldn't work for a cent, although they tinkered with it night and day. Then one evening they did something to it and caught their first message. You should have seen Bob! He was crazy and came rushing straight home to make Ma drop everything she was doing and go down to Hicks's. Now Mother was elbow-deep in bread and declared she couldn't spoil her biscuit for any wireless on earth. Besides, she had never had any faith in the thing. You see, Bob had teased her for wireless money and she had told him time and time again it was dollars thrown into a hole. My father used to joke her about not having a scientific mind and I guess she hasn't one. At any rate, whenever Bob would read her the wonderful things being done with wireless, all she would say was that it wasn't likely folks could send speeches and music loose through the air. Those who pretended to hear them were either fibbing or were genuinely mistaken. So when Bob did get a broadcast you can imagine how wild he was to convince her it wasn't all bluff."
"And did he?" asked Dick with interest.
"Well, after a fashion," replied Walter, smiling at some amusing memory.
"Like enough I shouldn't have known much about it, either, if Bob had not told me," continued Walter. "Bob, however, talked nothing else morning, noon, and night. Often I would drop asleep while he was chattering of induction coils, wave lengths, and antenna. It makes me yawn now to think of it. My goodness, weren't Ma and I sick to death of hearing nothing but radio! Bob would rush into the house at mealtime, swallow his food whole, and tear off to Hicks's with a piece of pie in his hand, leaving all the chores to me. I got pretty sore, I can tell you." He gave a short laugh.
"Between Mother begrudging the poor chap every cent he spent for batteries and wire, and me pitching into him for forgetting to chop the kindlings, I'm afraid his early wireless career wasn't a very pleasant one."
Once more the lad laughed, this time with comic ruefulness.
"Even when the apparatus actually did begin to work and Bob and Billy were able to get a concert or lecture now and then, Ma insisted they were bluffing her. She listened in but wasn't convinced, declaring they had fastened a victrola to the receivers and that such sounds never could come through the air. Finally they did succeed in getting her to half believe they were telling her the truth and were not just working her for money. But when they tried to explain the outfit to her in detail, she put her hands over her ears, protesting that they were wasting their breath to tell her of damped and undamped waves, detectors, and generators. With that they gave up further attempts to educate her."
Both boys chuckled.
"But she must be proud of your brother now," asserted Dick.
"Oh, she is—tremendously, although what she chiefly thinks about is the danger Bob is in of getting struck by lightning or electrocuted."