In his family a birthday was an occasion for a chocolate cake, some neckties, and perhaps a pair of rubber boots or a similar useful gift. Or it sometimes brought with it a book and a box of candy. Never by any chance did its felicitations expand into a gift so colossal as a wireless apparatus. The breach between the two lads, which during the exchange of confidences had narrowed into nothingness, widened abruptly.
"A good set would be some present," he commented, thinking, perhaps, the other boy might be ignorant of its value.
"Oh, I guess it would not break Dad," smiled Dick serenely. "He gave me my car last year, and the year before—let me think—oh, the pups!" He pointed to the Airedales, a streak of buff against the green of the distant marsh. "Wireless couldn't cost much more."
"N—o, I don't believe it would," His Highness admitted slowly, the contrast in their financial standards seeping in on him.
"Oh, I imagine I could have a set all right if I said the word," continued Dick, with the indifference of one to whom such presents brought no agitation. "The question is, could we set it up if we had it?"
"I couldn't," came promptly from Walter. "I think, though, that if Bob was home on leave he might help us."
"Your brother? I had forgotten him. So he is at home sometimes?"
"Oh, yes. He gets off for a day now and then."
"It must be a whole lot of a bore to be tied down in a wireless station listening for messages all the time," observed Dick carelessly.
"Operators do not have to sit with their ears glued to the receivers every second, man," declared the village lad. "The men are relieved at regular hours. Besides, all stations both on shore and on shipboard are divided into classes and have their hours carefully mapped out for them. There are three different varieties of shipboard stations, for example. Some have constant service; that is, operators are always listening while the ship is underway. Then there is a second sort where the operator listens in only during specified hours when the office is open for business. A third class has no fixed hours at all, the radio man just listening the first ten minutes of each hour."