The radio girls of Roselawn

“The radio telephone business. You know he was eighteen months on a destroyer in the war, even if he was only a kid. You know,” and Amy giggled, “he says that if women’s ages are always elastic, it was no crime for him to stretch his age when he enlisted. Anyhow, he knows all about the ‘listening boxes’ down in the hold. And that is all this radio is.”

“Oh, but Amy!” cried Jessie, with a toss of her blond head, “that is old stuff. The radio of to-day is very different—much improved. Anybody can have a receiving set and hear the most wonderful things out of the air. It has been brought to every home.”

“‘Have you a little radio in your home?’” chuckled Amy, her fingers still flying.

“Dear me, Amy, you are so difficult,” sighed her chum.

“Not at all, not at all,” replied the other girl. “You can understand me, just as e-e-easy! But you know, Jess, I have to act as a brake for your exuberance.”

“Don’t care,” declared Jessie. “I’m going to have one.”

“If cook isn’t looking, bring one for me, too,” suggested the irrepressible joker.

“I mean to have a radio set,” repeated Jessie quite seriously. “It says in this magazine article that one can erect the aerials and all, oneself. And place the instrument. I am going to do it.”

“Sure you can,” declared Amy, with confidence. “If you said you could rebuild the Alps—and improve on them—I’d root for you, honey.”

“I don’t want any of your joking,” declared Jessie, with emphasis. “I am in earnest.”

“So am I. About the Alps. Aunt Susan, who went over this year, says the traveling there is just as rough as it was before the war. She doesn’t see that the war did any good. If I were you, Jess, and thought of making over the Alps——”

“Now, Amy Drew! Who said anything about the Alps?”

“I did,” confessed her chum. “And I was about to suggest that, if you tackle the job of rebuilding them, you flatten ’em out a good bit so Aunt Susan can get across them easier.”

“Amy Drew! Will you ever have sense?”

“What is it, a conundrum? Something about ‘Take care of the dollars and the cents will take care of themselves?’”

“I am talking about installing a radio set in our house. And if you don’t stop funning and help me do it, I won’t let you listen in, so there!”

“I’ll be good,” proclaimed Amy at once. “I enjoy gossip just as much as the next one. And if you can get it out of the air——”

“It has to be sent from a broadcasting station,” announced Jessie.

“There’s one right in this town,” declared Amy, with vigor.

“No!”

“Yes, I tell you. She lives in the second house from the corner of Breen Street, the yellow house with green blinds——”

“Now, Amy! Listen here! Never mind local gossips. They only broadcast neighborhood news. But we can get concerts and weather reports and lectures——”

Amy painfully writhed in her chair at this point. “Say not so, Jess!” she begged. “Get lectures enough at school—and from dad, once in a while, when the dear thinks I go too far.”

“I think you go too far most of the time,” declared her chum primly. “Nobody else would have the patience with you that I have.”

“Except Burd Alling,” announced Amy composedly. “He thinks I am all right.”

“Pooh! Whoever said Burd Alling had good sense?” demanded Jessie. “Now listen!” She read a long paragraph from the magazine article. “You see, it is the very latest thing to do. Everybody is doing it. And it is the most wonderful thing!”