"Huh!" snuffled Henrietta. "It's too bad you've got the same name as that Moon girl, Sally. Why don't you ask the minister to change it for you? He christens folks, doesn't he?"
"Why, yes," murmured Sally, uncertainly. "But I was christened, you know, oh, years and years ago."
"That don't cut no ice," replied Henrietta, unconscious that her language was not all it ought to be. "You just have him do it over again. And don't be no 'Sally,' nor no more 'Belle.'"
CHAPTER XVI--"RADIO CONTROL"
Jessie Norwood had talked over the matter of the new super-regenerative circuit with her father and had got him interested in the idea of using one to improve their own radio receiving. It was not difficult to interest Mr. Norwood in it, for he had become a radio enthusiast like his daughter since the Roselawn girls had broken into the wireless game.
With the large party now in the Norwood's bungalow in Station Island, it was not convenient to use only the head-phones when the radio concerts were to be received out of the ether. The two-step amplifier Mr. Norwood had formerly bought did not always work well, especially, for some unknown reason, since they had come to the seashore.
In addition, the sounds through the horn seemed to be scratchy and harsh, a good deal like the sounds from a poor talking machine. From what Jessie had read, she understood that these harsh noises would be obviated if the super-regenerative circuit was put in. Her father had telegraphed for the material to build the super-regenerative and amplifier circuit, and the material came by express the morning after the picnic on which Henrietta had disgraced herself.
"We will try the thing here on the island," Mr. Norwood said to Jessie.
"If it works here it will surely work back at Roselawn, for the temperature, or humidity, or something, is different there from what it is here. At least, so it seems to me, and the state of the air surely influences radio."
"Static," said Jessie, briefly, reading the instructions in the book.
Amy, of course, was quite as interested in the new invention as her chum; and Nell, too. But they were not so clear in their minds as was Jessie about what should be done in building the new set. Jessie was glad to have her father show so much interest, for he was eminently practical, and when the girls were uncertain how to proceed it was nice to have somebody like the lawyer to turn to.
He even let Mr. Drew and the two mothers go off to the golf course that day without him, while he gave his aid to the girls. The boys were cleaning up the yacht in preparation for the voyage they expected to make in a short time.
Nell's Aunt Freda had arrived that morning, so the minister's daughter did not have to worry at all about Bob and Fred and Sally.
"And to help out," Amy said, with a giggle, "Henrietta is invited over to the Stanley bungalow to play with little Sally."
"I guess Aunt Freda will get along all right with them," observed Nell, with some amusement. "But Fred pretty nearly floored her at the start.
She says it takes her several hours to get 'acclimated' when she comes to our house."
"What did Fred say--or do?" asked Jessie, interested.
"There was something Aunt Freda advised him to do and he said he would--'to-morrow.'
"'Don't you know,' she asked him, 'that "to-morrow never comes"?'
"'Gee! and to-morrow's my birthday,' grumbled Fred. 'Now I suppose I won't have any.'"
"What kids they are!" gasped Amy, when she had recovered from her laughter. "I don't know whether a younger brother is worse than an older brother or not. I've had my troubles with Darrington," and she sighed with mock seriousness.
"Ha!" exclaimed Jessie. "I guess he's had his troubles with you. Do you remember when you smeared your hands all up with chocolate cake and tried to wipe them clean on Darry's new trousers?"
Nell shouted with laughter at this revelation, but it did not trouble Amy Drew in the least.
"Yes," she admitted. "My taste in the art of dressing, you see, was well developed even at that early age. Those trousers, I remember, were of an atrocious pattern."
"Nonsense!" cried Jessie. "They were Darry's first long pants, and you were mad to think he was so much older than you that he could put on men's clothes."
"Dear me!" sighed Amy. "You make me out an awful creature, Jess Norwood.
But, never mind. Darry has paid me up and to spare for that unladylike trick. He _has_ been a trial--and is so yet. He doesn't know how to pick a decent necktie. His shirts--some of them--are so loud that you can see him coming clear across The Green. Why! they tell me that his shirts are as well known in New Haven, and almost as prominently mentioned by the natives, as the Hartley Memorial Hall; and almost _nobody_ gets away from the City of Elms without being obliged to see that."
"What a reckless talker you are, Amy!" Jessie said, smiling. "And I will not hear you run Darry down. I think too much of him myself."
"Don't let him guess it," said the absent Darry's sister, with a grin.
"It will spoil him--make him proud and hard to hold."
"That's a good one!" laughed Nell. "You think Darry can be as easily spoiled by praise as the Chinese servant Reverend tells about that he had in California. This was before I was born. Father and mother got a Coolie right at the dock. You could do that in those days. And John scarcely knew a word of English, not even the pidgin variety.
"But Reverend says that when John acquired a few English words he was so proud that there was no holding him. He asked the name of every new object he saw and mispronounced it usually in the most absurd manner.
Once John found a sparrow's nest in the grapevine and shuffled into Reverend's study to tell him about it.
"'Is there anything in the nest yet, John?' Reverend asked him.
"'Yes,' the Chinaman declared, puffed up with his knowledge of the new language, 'Spallow alle samme got pups.'"
While they chattered and laughed the three girls were as busy as bees with the new radio arrangement. Amy said that Jessie kept them so hard at work that it did not seem at all as though they were "vacationing."
It was good, healthy work for all.
"It does seem awfully quiet here without Hen," went on Amy, hammering on a board with a heavy hammer and making the big room where the radio set was, ring. "She keeps the place almost as tomb-like as a boiler shop--what?"
"You can make a little noise yourself," Jessie told her. "What's all the hammering for?"
"So things won't sound too tame. How are we getting on with the new circuit?"
"Why, Amy Drew! you just helped me place this vario-coupler. Didn't you know what you were doing?"
"Not a bit," confessed Amy. "You are away out of my depth, Jess. And don't try to tell me what it all means, that's a dear. I never can remember scientific terms."
"Put up the hammer," said Nell, laughing. "You are a confirmed knocker, anyway, Amy. But I admit I do not understand this tangle of wires."
They did not seek to disconnect the old regenerative set that day, for there was much of interest expected out of the ether before the day was over. One particular thing Jessie looked for, but she had said nothing about it to anybody save her very dearest chum, Amy, and the clergyman's daughter, Nell.
Two days before she had done some telephoning over the long-distance wire. Of course there was a cable to the mainland from Station Island, and Jessie had called up and interviewed Mark Stratford at Stratfordtown.
Mark was a college friend of Darry and Burd, but he was likewise a very good friend of the Roselawn girls--and he had reason for being. As related in a previous volume, "The Radio Girls on the Program," Jessie and Amy had found a watch Mark had lost, and as it was a valuable watch and had been given him by his grandmother, Mark was very grateful.
Through his influence--to a degree--Jessie and Amy had got on the program at the Stratfordtown broadcasting station. And now Jessie had talked with the young man and arranged for a surprise by radio that was to come off that very evening at "bedtime story hour."
Henrietta and little Sally and Bob and Fred Stanley, as well as some of the other children of the bungalow colony, crowded into the house at that time to "listen in" on the Roselawn girls' instrument.
The amplifier worked all right that evening, and Jessie was very glad.
The little folks arranged themselves on the chairs and settees with some little confusion while Jessie tuned the set to the Stratfordtown length of wave. There was some static, but after a little that disappeared and they waited for the announcement from the faraway station.
By and by, as Henrietta whispered, the radio began to "buzz." "Now we'll get it!" cried the little Dogtown girl. "I hope it is about the little boy with the rabbit ears that he could wiggle."
"S-sh!" commanded Jessie, making a gesture for silence.