"Nothing doing!" protested Harvey. "You're going to stay here and have lunch with me. I can't give you much, but it will probably enable you to totter along until this evening, anyway."

The boys protested against putting the radio man to so much trouble, but he would not take no for an answer, so they allowed themselves to be persuaded, gladly enough, in truth.

It did not take the radio man long to prepare a simple but nourishing meal, all the cooking being done on an electric stove he had rigged up himself. While they ate they talked, and Brandon Harvey told them something about himself. It seemed that he had formerly been an accountant, having taken up radio as a hobby at first, but then, finding himself deeply interested in it, had resolved to make it his life work.

"I still do a little at my old trade, though," Harvey told them. "I'm treasurer of the Ocean Point Building and Loan a.s.sociation, and that sometimes keeps me pretty busy in the evenings after I'm off duty here."

"I should think it would," commented Bob. "What do you have to do, anyway?"

"Oh, I keep the books straightened out, and occasionally I make collections of cash," answered Harvey. "I'll probably get knocked on the head sometime when I'm carrying the money around with me. I always feel rather uneasy when I have any large sum about, there seem to be so many holdups these days."

"Have you a good safe place here to keep the money?" asked Joe.

"Yes, fairly safe," responded Harvey. "I put it in the Company's safe here, and I don't suppose anybody would bother about it. But just the same, I don't leave it here unless I simply haven't had time to deposit it in the bank."

The talk drifted into other channels, and the boys thought little more of what he had told them at that time. After lunch they practiced sending with the buzzer set, and got so that they could recognize some of the letters when they were sent very slowly.

"Huh," said Jimmy, elated at his success in making out two letters in succession, "I'll be sending and receiving thirty words a minute in a little while."

"How little?" grinned Bob.

"Just about a hundred years or so," put in Herb, before Jimmy could answer.

"Hundred nothing!" said Jimmy indignantly. "Don't think because it will take you that long that I'll be just as slow. I'm going to show you some speed."

"Go on!" chaffed Herb. "Who ever heard of anybody as fat as you showing speed? You don't know what that word means."

"Just the same, I haven't seen you read _any_ words yet," retorted Jimmy. "About the only one you know is E, and that's because it's only one dot."

"Well, I'll know the whole blamed thing pretty soon," said Herb. "You see if I don't."

"I've no doubt you'll all be experts in a little while," laughed Harvey.

"'Practice makes perfect' in that as in most other things."

The boys remained at the big station until late in the afternoon, and then, with many thanks to their friend for his a.s.sistance, they started back home.

"Mr. Harvey is one of the finest men I've ever met," said Bob, as they walked briskly along. "He and his cousin are a good deal alike. They both know a lot, and they're both willing to help other people understand the things they're interested in."

"Yes, we couldn't have made a better friend," said Joe. "I only hope we have the chance to do something for him some day. I feel as though I'd learned a lot about radio just since we came to Ocean Point."

Jimmy and Herb warmly indorsed this statement, and had the radio man been able to hear them, he would probably have felt fully repaid for his efforts in their behalf.

He, for his part, felt indebted to the boys. Their eager enthusiasm had stirred him deeply, and their laughter and good fellowship had come like a fresh breeze into the routine of his daily life. He was still young enough himself to feel in perfect touch with them, and he welcomed their coming and regretted their departure.

He sat for some time musing, with a smile on his lips after they had left him. Then the conversation he had with them about the money he held in trust recurred to him, and he stepped over to the safe, took out the funds and counted them.

He gave a whistle of surprise when he realized how much had acc.u.mulated.

"Too much to have on hand at one time," he said to himself, as he closed the safe. "I must get that over to the bank!"

CHAPTER XIX-DANCING TO RADIO

"That talk with Mr. Harvey has certainly made me ambitious," remarked Bob that evening, as the boys were tinkering with their radio set.

"Who was that poet who said:

'I charge thee, fling away ambition, 'Twas through ambition that the angels fell,'

quoted Joe.

"Pretty good dope, too, if you ask me," said Jimmy.

"I might have expected that that would hit you pretty hard," replied Bob, with what was meant to be withering sarcasm, though Jimmy did not "bat an eyelash." "But it doesn't apply to me at all. In the first place, I'm not an angel--"

"How you surprise us," murmured Herb.

"So that what happened to angels needn't necessarily happen to me,"

continued Bob.

"I prithee, gentle stranger, in what direction doth thy ambition lead?"

asked Herb, at the same time looking around at the others and tapping his forehead significantly.

"In the direction of that loop aerial that we were talking about before we left Clintonia," answered Bob. "You know Mr. Brandon said it was good, and you remember what he told us about the way the British used it to trap the German fleet. That's been running in my head ever since.

What do you say to rigging one up and seeing just what it will do? If we find it better than our present aerial, we'll use it altogether."

"Well, I'm ready to try anything once," chimed in Joe.

"I suppose here's where Jimmy gets busy in making a frame for it?"

suggested Jimmy, in an aggrieved tone.

"Likely enough," replied Bob heartlessly. "You need a little work to get some of that fat off of you, anyway. But after you get the frame and the pivot made--"

"Oh, yes, the pivot, too!" said Jimmy. "All right, go ahead. Be sure you don't overlook anything."

"The rest of us will pitch in and wind the wire," finished Bob.

Jimmy heaved a long sigh, and to revive his drooping spirits, produced a pound box of a.s.sorted chocolates that an aunt in Clintonia had sent him.

But Jimmy chose an unfortunate moment to exhibit these delicacies, for at that moment Herb's sisters, Amy and Agnes, entered the room and immediately espied the box of tempting confections.

"Oh, isn't that nice!" exclaimed Agnes. "Did you bring these just for Amy and me, Jimmy?"

"Well-er-not exactly," stammered Jimmy. "I was figuring that we'd all have a hack at them, I guess."

"But I thought boys didn't care for chocolate creams," said Agnes.