ll 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 aerials 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 aerial, 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.

The other outfit made by the boys, which, except the elaborate box and
stand, was an exact duplicate of the Hooper receiver, was taken to the
Brown cottage. Gus insisted that Bill had the best right to it, and as
the Griers and Mrs. Brown had long been the best of friends and lived
almost next door to each other, all the members of the carpenter's
family would be welcome to listen in whenever they wanted to. The little
evening gatherings at certain times for this purpose were both mirthful
and delightful.

The boys' aerial was a three-wire affair, stretchi