"Sure. Goin' to make up your loss an' then some. I'm a heap int'rested in this Eddy's son business, ain't I? Think I ain't wantin' to see that there contraption that hears a hunderd miles off? Get busy an' give me the expense. We've got to git a-goin'."

"But, Mr. Hooper, our loss isn't yours and you have got enough to--"

"Don't talk; figger! I'm runnin' this loss business. Don't want to make me mad; eh? Git at it an' hurry up!" He turned and walked away. Grace followed in a moment, but over her shoulder remarked to the wondering boys:

"Do as Dad says if you want to keep our friendship. Dad isn't any sort of a piker,--you know that."

The insistency was too direct; "the queen's wish was a command." The boys would have to comply and they could get square with their good friends in the end. So at it they went, Bill with pad and pencil, Gus calling out the items as his eye or his memory gleaned them from the hard-looking objects in the burned ma.s.s as he raked it over. Presently Grace came out again.

"Dad wants the list and the amount," she said. "He's got to go to the city with Mr. Herring."

Bill handed over his pad and she was gone, to return as quickly in a few minutes.

"Here is an order on the bank; you can draw the cash as you need it. You can start working in the stable loft; then bring your stuff over. There will be a watchman on the grounds from to-night, so don't worry about any more fires. I must go help get Dad off."

Once more she retreated; again she stopped to say something, as an afterthought, over her shoulder:

"And, boys, won't you let Skeets and me help you some? Skeets will be here again next week and I love to tinker and contrive and make all sorts of things; it'll be fun to see the radio receiver grow."

"Sure, you can," said Gus; and Bill nodded, adding: "We have only a limited time now, and any help will count a lot."

Going down to the bank, Bill again outlined the work in detail, suggesting the purchases of even better machinery and tools, of only the best grades of materials. There must be another trip to the city, the most strenuous part of the work.

"We'll get it through on time, I guess," said Bill.

"I'm not thinking so much of that as about how that fire started," said Gus.

"It couldn't have been any of our chemicals, could it?"

"Chem--? My eye! Don't you know, old chap? I'll bet Mr. Hooper and Grace have the correct suspicion."

"More crooked business? You don't mean--"

"Sure, I do! Thad, of course. And, Bill, we're going to get him, sooner or later. Mr. Hooper won't want to stand this sort of thing forever.

I've got a hunch that we're not through with that game yet."

CHAPTER XX

"TO LABOR AND TO WAIT"

It was truly astonishing what well organized labor could do under intelligent direction; the boys had a fine example of this before them and a fine lesson in the accomplishment. The new garage grew into a new and somewhat larger building, on the site of the old, almost over night.

There were three eight-hour shifts of men and two foremen, with the supervising architect and Mr. Grier apparently always on the job. As soon as the second floor was laid, the roof on and the sheathing in place, Bill and Gus moved in. The men gave them every aid and Mr. Grier gave special attention to building their benches, trusses, a drawing-board stand, shelving and tool chests. Then, how those new radio receivers did come on!

Grace and Skeets were given little odd jobs during the very few hours of their insistent helping. They varnished, polished, oiled, cleaned copper wire, unpacked material, even swept up the _debris_ left by the carpenters; at least, they did until Skeets managed to fall headlong down about one-half of the unfinished stairway and to sprain her ankle.

Then Grace's loyalty compelled her attention to her friend.

Mr. Hooper breezed in from time to time, but never to take a hand; to do so would have seemed quite out of place, though the old gentleman laughingly made an excuse for this:

"Lads, I ain't no tinker man; never was. Drivin' a pesky nail's a huckleberry above my persimmon. Cattle is all I know, an' I kin still learn about them, I reckon. But I know what I kin see an' hear an', b'jinks, I'm still doubtin' I'm ever goin' to hear that there Eddy's son do this talkin'. But get busy, lads; get busy!"

"Oh, fudge, Dad! Can't you see they're dreadfully busy? You can't hurry them one bit faster." Grace was ever just.

"No," said Skeets, who had borrowed Bill's crutch to get into the shop for a little while. "No, Mr. Hooper; if they were to stay up all night, go without eats and work twenty-five hours a day they couldn't do any--"

And just then the end of the too-much inclined crutch skated outward and the habitually unfortunate girl dropped kerplunk on the floor. Gus and Grace picked her up. She was not hurt by her fall. Her very plumpness had saved her.

"For goodness' sake, Skeets, are you ever going to get the habit of keeping yourself upright?" asked Grace, who laughed harder than the others, except Skeets herself; the stout girl generally got the utmost enjoyment out of her own troubles.

Quiet restored, Mr. Hooper returned to his subject.

"I reckon you lads, when you git this thing made that's goin' to hoodoo the air, will be startin' in an' tryin' somethin' else; eh?" he ventured, grinning.

"Later, perhaps, but not just yet," Bill replied. "Not until we can manage to learn a lot more, Gus and I. Mr. Grier says that the compet.i.tion of brains nowadays is a lot sharper than it was in Edison's young days, and even he had to study and work a lot before he really did any big inventing. Professor Gray says that a technical education is best for anyone who is going to do things, though it is a long way from making a fellow perfect and must be followed up by hard practice."

"And we can wait, I guess," put in Gus.

"Until we can manage in some way to sc.r.a.pe together enough cash to buy books and get apparatus for experiments and go on with our schooling."

"We want more physics and especially electricity," said Gus.

"And other knowledge as well, along with that," Bill amended.

"I reckon you fellers is right," said Mr. Hooper, "but I don't know anything about it. I quit school when I was eleven, but that ain't sayin' I don't miss it. If I had an eddication now, like you lads is goin' to git, er like the Perfesser has, I'd give more'n half what I own. Boys that think they're smart to quit school an' go to work is natchal fools. A feller may git along an' make money, but he'd make a heap more an' be a heap happier, 'long of everything else, if he'd got a schoolin'. An' any boy that's got real sand in his gizzard can buckle down to books an' get a schoolin', even if he don't like it. What I'm a learnin' nowadays makes me know that a feller can make any old study int'restin' if he jes' sets down an' looks at it the right way."

"That's what Gus and I think. There are studies we don't like very much, but we can make ourselves like them for we've got to know a lot about them."

"Grammar, for instance," said Gus.

"Sure. It is tiresome stuff, learning a lot of rules that work only half. But if a fellow is going to be anybody and wants to stand in with people, he's got to know how to talk correctly and write, too." Bill's logic was sound.

"Daddy should have had a drilling in grammar," commented Grace, laughing.

"Oh, you!" blurted Skeets. "Mr. Hooper can talk so that people understand him--and when you _do_ talk," she turned to the old gentleman, "I notice folks are glad to listen, and so is Grace."

"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.