"But, my dear," protested the subject of criticism, "they'd listen better an' grin less if I didn't sling words about like one o' these here Eye-talians shovelin' dirt."
"You just keep a-shovelin', Mr. Hooper, your own way," said Bill, "and if we catch anybody even daring to grin at you, why, I'll have Gus land on them with his famous grapple!"
Mr. Hooper threw back his coat, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his big, white vest and swelled out his chest.
"Now, listen to that! An' this from a lad who ain't got a thing to expect from me an' ain't had as much as he's a-givin' me, either—an' knows it. But that's nothin' else but Simon pure frien'ship, I take it. An' Gus, here, him an' Bill, they think about alike; eh, Gus?" Gus nodded and the old gentleman continued, addressing his remarks to his daughter and Skeets:
"Now, if I know anything at all about anything at all I know what I'm goin' to do. I ain't got no eddication, but that ain't goin' to keep me from seein' some others git it. You Gracie, fer one, an' you, too, Skeeter, if your old daddy'll let you come an' go to school with Gracie. But that ain't all; if you lads kin git ol' Eddy's son out o' the air on this contraption you're makin' an' hear him talk fer sure, I'm goin' to see to it that you kin git all the tec—tec—what you call it?—eddication there is goin' an' I'm goin' to put Perfesser Gray wise on that, too, soon's he comes back. No—don't you say a word now. I know what I'm a-doin'." With that the old gentleman turned and marched out of the shop. But at the bottom of the garage steps he called back:
"Say, boys, I gotta go away fer a couple o' weeks, or mebbe three. Push it right along an' mebbe you'll be hearin' from old man Eddy's son when I git back!"
CHAPTER XXI
EARLY STRUGGLES
The receiving outfits were completed; the aërials had been put up, one installed at the garage, the other at the mansion. Grace naturally had all, the say about placing the one in her home. The aërial, of four wires, each thirty feet long and parallel, were attached equi-distant, and at each end to springy pieces of ash ten feet long, these being insulators in part and sustained by spiral spring cables, each divided by a glass insulator block, the extended cables being fastened to a maple tree and the house chimney. The ground wire went down the side of the house beside a drain pipe.
The house receiver, in a cabinet that had cost the boys much painstaking labor, was set by a window and, after Grace and Skeets had been instructed how to tune the instrument to varying wave lengths, they and good Mrs. Hooper enjoyed many delightful periods of listening in, all zealously consulting the published programs from the great broadcasting stations.