"Oh, dear, me! I hope you won't worry Momsy. It can't be so, or there would be something about it in the radio papers and in those books. In one place I saw it stated that the aerials were really preventative of lightning striking the house."

"I know. They used to have lightning rods on houses, especially in the country. But it was found to be a good deal of a fallacy. I guess, after all, Mrs. Grimsby has it partly right. Human beings cannot easily command the elements which Nature controls."

"Seems to me we are disproving that right in this radio business,"

cried Jessie. "And it is going to be wonderful--just _wonderful_--before long. They say moving pictures will be transmitted by radio; and there will be machines so that people can speak directly back and forth, and you'll have a picture before you of the person you are speaking to."

She began to laugh again. "You know what Amy says? She says she always powders her nose before she goes to the telephone. You never know who you may have to speak to! So she is ready for the new invention."

"Just the same, I am rather timid about the lightning, Jessie," her mother said.

THE CANOE TRIP

CARTER'S GHOST

CHAPTER VII

THE CANOE TRIP

Of course, Jessie Norwood and Amy Drew did not spend all their time over the radio set in Jessie's room. At least, they did not do so after the first two or three days.

There was not much the girls cared to hear being broadcasted before late afternoon; so they soon got back to normal. Not being obliged to get off to school every day but Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, had suddenly made opportunity for many new interests.

"Or, if they are not new," Amy said decisively, "we haven't worn them out."

"Do you think we shall wear out the radio, honey?" asked Jessie, laughing.

"I don't see how the air can be worn out. And the radio stuff certainly comes through the air. Or do the Hertzian waves come through the ground, as some say?"

"You will have to ask some scientist who has gone into the matter more deeply than I have," Jessie said demurely. "But what is this revived interest that you want to take up?"

"Canoe. Let's take a lunch and paddle away down to the end of the lake. There are just wonderful flowers there. And one of the girls said that her brothers were over by the abandoned Carter place and found some wild strawberries."

"M-mm! I love 'em," confessed Jessie.

"Better than George Washington sundaes," agreed her chum. "Say we go?"

"I'll run tell Momsy. She can play with my radio while we are gone,"

and Jessie went downstairs to find her mother.

"I tell you what," said Amy as, with their paddles, the girls wended their way down to the little boathouse and landing. "Won't it be great if they ever get pocket radios?"

"Pocket radios!" exclaimed Jessie.

"I mean what the man said in the magazine article we read in the first place. Don't you remember? About carrying some kind of a condensed receiving set in one's pocket--a receiving and a broadcasting set, too."

"Oh! But that is a dream."

"I don't know," rejoined Amy, who had become a thorough radio convert by this time. "It is not so far in advance, perhaps. I see one man has invented an umbrella aerial-receiving thing--what-you-may-call-it."

"An umbrella!" gasped Jessie.

"Honest. He opens it and points the ferrule in the direction of the broadcasting station he is tuned to. Then he connects the little radio set, clamps on his head harness, and listens in."

"It sounds almost impossible."

"Of course, he doesn't get the sounds very loud. But he _hears_. He can go off in his automobile and take it all with him. Or out in a boat----Say, it would be great sport to have one in our canoe."

"You be careful how you get into it yourself and never mind the radio," cried Jessie, as Amy displayed her usual carelessness in embarking.

"I haven't got on a thing that water will hurt," declared the other girl.

"That's all right. But everything you have on can get wet. Do be still. You are like an eel!" cried Jessie.

"Don't!" rejoined Amy with a shudder. "I loathe eels. They are so squirmy. One wound right around my arm once when I was fishing down the lake, and I never have forgotten the slimy feel of it."

Jessie laughed. "We won't catch eels to-day. I never thought about fishing, anyway. I want strawberries, if there are any down there."

Lake Monenset was not a wide body of water. Burd Alling had said it was only as wide as "two hoots and a holler." Burd had spent a few weeks in the Tennessee Mountains once, and had brought back some rather queer expressions that the natives there use.

Lake Monenset was several miles long. The head of it was in Roselawn at one side of the Norwood estate and almost touched the edge of Bonwit Boulevard. It was bordered by trees for almost its entire length on both sides, and it was shaped like a enormous, elongated comma.

The gardener at the Norwood estate and his helper looked after the boathouse and the canoes. The Norwood's was not the only small estate that verged upon the lake, but like everything else about the Norwood place, its lake front was artistically adorned.

There were rose hedges down here, too, and as the two girls pushed out from the landing the breath of summer air that followed them out upon the lake was heavy with the scent of June roses.

The girls were dressed in such boating costumes as gave them the very freest movement, and they both used the paddle skillfully. The roomy canoe, if not built for great speed, certainly was built for as much comfort as could be expected in such a craft.

Jessie was in the bow and Amy at the stern. They quickly "got into step," as Amy called it, and their paddles literally plied the lake as one. Faster and faster the canoe sped on and very soon they rounded the wooded tongue of land that hid all the long length of the lower end of the lake.

"Dogtown is the only blot on the landscape," panted Amy, after a while. "It stands there right where the brook empties into the lake and--and it is unsightly. Whee!"

"What are you panting for, Amy?" demanded her chum.

"For breath, of course," rejoined Amy. "Whee! You are setting an awfully fast pace, Jess."

"I believe you are getting over-fat, Amy," declared Jessie, solemnly.

"Say not so! But I did eat an awfully big breakfast. The strawberries were so good! And the waffles!"

"Yet you insisted on bringing a great shoe box of lunch," said her friend.