eally send and receive messages?"

"He sure can."

"How did he learn?"

"Oh, he first got interested in wireless through the papers and picked
up quite a lot of information that way. Later he and his chum Billy
Hicks bought a manual and with the help of the physics teacher at the
High School they rigged up a homemade receiving apparatus on Billy's
grandfather's barn. For a while it wouldn't work for a cent, although
they tinkered with it night and day. Then one evening they did
something to it and caught their first message. You should have seen
Bob! He was crazy and came rushing straight home to make Ma drop
everything she was doing and go down to Hicks's. Now Mother was
elbow-deep in bread and declared she couldn't spoil her biscuit for
any wireless on earth. Besides, she had never had any faith in the
thing. You see, Bob had teased her for wireless money and she had told
him time and time again it was dollars thrown into a hole. My father
used to joke her about not having a scientific mind and I guess she
hasn't one. At any rate, whenever Bob would read her the wonderful
things being done with wireless, all she would say was that it wasn't
likely folks could send speeches and music loose through the air.
Those who pretended to hear them were either fibbing or were genuinely
mistaken. So when Bob did get a broadcast you can imagine how wild he
was to convince her it wasn't all bluff."

"And did he?" asked Dick with interest.

"Well, after a fashion," replied Walter, smiling at some amusing
memory.

"Like enough I shouldn't have known much about it, either, if Bob had
not told me," continued Walter. "Bob, however, talked nothing else
morning, noon, and night. Often I would drop asleep while he was
chattering of induction coils, wave lengths, and antenna. It makes me
yawn now to think of it. My goodness, weren't Ma and I sick to death
of hearing nothing but radio! Bob would rush into the house at
mealtime, swallow his food whole, and tear off to Hicks's with a piece
of pie in his hand, leaving all the chores to me. I got pretty sore, I
can tell you." He gave a short laugh.

"Between Mother begrudging the poor chap every cent he spent for
batteries and wire, and me pitching into him for forgetting to chop
the kindlings, I'm afraid his early wireless career wasn't a very
pleasant one."

Once more the lad laughed, this time with comic ruefulness.

"Even when the apparatus actually did begin to work and Bob and