The Radio Girls on the program — Themes and Context

to the Norwood grounds, set upon another terraced lawn, was the Drew house, where Amy lived with her parents and her brother, Darrington Drew, when he was at home. The girls were high school pupils, but Darrington had just finished his first year at Yale.

Amy, staring in the direction her chum pointed, between the Norwood house and a tower at one side, shook her head with mock sadness.

“I really do believe, Jess,” said she, “that there is something in the air besides static. There must be imps that twist those wires. You know it isn’t a week since we lowered the whole thing and took the twists out.”

“I don’t suppose we really have more trouble with our radio than other amateurs. Come on, Amy! Let’s get into our working togs and do a good job while we are about it.”

“All right,” agreed Amy. “Lucky I left my radio suit over here.”

“Your what?” asked her chum, laughing, as the two ran up the veranda steps.

“Radio suit,” repeated Amy seriously. “Those overalls were once our farmerette costumes; but the war is over and the sword is beaten into a plowshare, and our farmerette overalls have become radio rigging suits. Whew! Don’t go so fast, Jess. I can’t climb stairs and talk at the same time.”

In Jessie’s bedroom the two girls changed to the overall suits Amy had mentioned. Young as Jessie Norwood was, she had a suite of rooms to herself. In the long sitting room was her radio cabinet, a much better set than the ordinary house instrument. It had a two-step amplifier and a horn, but there were the usual headphones as well.

“That concert is due right now,” Jessie said, coming out into the big room. “Let us see how it sounds before we lower the aerial. It may have been partly static last night.”

She opened the receiving switch and fastened on the head harness. Amy came over and sat down, likewise affixing one set of the phones. Jessie tuned the machine with practised hand. At first the chattering noises in the air meant nothing intelligible.

“But it’s awfully loud,” murmured the puzzled Amy. “Why, Jess! I never heard your set so loud.”

“Goodness! That isn’t radio,” Jessie declared suddenly.

“Wha-a-at?” drawled the puzzled Amy.

“That’s an airplane!” cried Jessie. “It must be coming right this way.”

“Oh! Over the house!” gasped her chum. “It’s zooming, Jess! Look!”

She tore the phone-tabs from her ears and darted to the window. Jessie could see out from where she sat. The noise of the aeroplane grew louder.

It was swooping so low that involuntarily the girls screamed.

“It—it will hit the house!” gasped Jessie.

“What can he be thinking of?” Amy demanded in equal amazement. “He is swooping so low——”

In seeming recklessness the aviator volplaned downward. Suddenly the roaring of the engine passed. If the pilot did not manage his controls within a dozen seconds in a way to shoot the plane upward again, there must surely be a catastrophe.

Jessie left her seat at the radio and thrust her head and shoulders out of the open window beside her chum. The nose of the plane continued to slant downward. The girls screamed again, for a wing of the plane struck the roof of the tower to which the farther end of the radio aerial was fastened.

“He’ll be killed!” shrieked Jessie.

The plane seemed about to turn turtle. It crashed against the radio antenna and tore it from its fastenings. Then with a deafening crash the machine landed on the lawn, utterly wrecking one of the big rose gardens.

What had become of the reckless pilot the two girls at the window could not see.

The two girls did not stand long at the open window of Jessie Norwood’s sitting room. That crash of the airplane spurred them to excited activity.

Amy Drew led the way, and she led it shrieking. Mrs. Norwood appeared at the door of the library, demanding:

“What has happened, girls? Stop shouting, Amy, please! You will raise the neighborhood.”

“That’s what we want to do, Momsy!” Jessie cried. “Something dreadful has happened!”

“That radio set! I knew something would happen because of it,” gasped the kindly but rather nervous woman.

In fact, when Jessie Norwood and her chum, Amy Drew, had first become interested in radio telephony Mrs. Norwood had been rather fearful of the new apparatus. Not that she would forbid her only child—nor would Mr. Norwood, who was a lawyer in New York—anything that might amuse her without doing others harm. But “Momsy,” as Jessie always called her mother, was very much afraid of lightning and she feared that the radio aerial would lead lightning, as well as radio broadcasting, into the house.

Jessie, however, although she had strung the aerial and set up the machine in her own room with very little help save what her chum gave her, had studied advisory radio books with care and had so placed and guarded the thing that there was positively no danger from lightning.

Indeed, so careful was she, and quite by instinct now, that before she had left the room to run down to see what had happened to the fallen airplane pilot, she had closed the receiving switch. And there was not a cloud in the sky!

Roselawn people had become vastly interested in radio telephony since Jessie Norwood had got her outfit. The Norwoods were popular anyway, but since the church bazaar, which had been held on the Norwood lawn on the recent Fourth of July, Jessie found herself more than usually sought after.

At that time, and by her suggestion, a tent had been raised upon the lawn and her radio set disconnected, brought down into the tent, and linked up again with the aerial. The tent seated a hundred people, and it was filled to capacity at each show. Immediately radio telephony became “all the rage,” Amy said, “all over Roselawn.”

The practical uses of the new interest were not alone discovered in the first volume of this series, called “The Radio Girls of Roselawn”; but through radio, or because of it, the two chums and their friends fell in with a wealth of adventure.

Associated with Jessie and Amy in the incidents of the former book were Amy’s older brother, Darrington, and his college friend, Burd Alling. And for the very reason that these young men were older than the high school girls, some of the classmates of the latter were convinced that they should likewise have the privilege of chumming with the two collegians.

Belle Ringold, a girl not far from the age of the radio girls of Roselawn, but who dressed in a fashion much older than her years, had shown her spleen on this very day by saying something very unpleasant regarding Jessie’s dress.

Jessie had quite forgotten this, however, as she plunged down the stairway and out of the door after Amy.

The wrecked plane looked a ruin. Every part of it seemed to have been torn to bits. Both wings were twisted into scraps and the woodwork was splintered into matchwood. It did not seem, to the horrified eyes of the two girls, that any human being could have come down in that plane and lived.

Amy halted on the top step of the wide porch, clasping her hands.

“Oh, Jess!” she groaned. “That bed of beautiful Marshal Niel roses your mother thought so much of!”

Jessie knew that her chum was too excited to realize just how this sounded. The roses—the whole great bed of them—were uprooted and crushed. But there was greater disaster than that.

“The pilot! The pilot, Amy!” Jessie gasped. “He must be killed.”

“If he didn’t get out before the crash, he must be,” rejoined Amy.

“Goodness! How could he get out?”

Jessie was ahead. She ran to the far side of the heap of rubbish that was the collapsed aeroplane. There seemed no part of the machine left intact. And just as the girls reached the spot a curl of smoke ascended from the midst of the wreck.

“It’s on fire! Oh, Amy, the thing will be burned up! And the poor man!”

“Oh, he mustn’t!” groaned Amy.

Jessie suddenly saw an arm sticking out from under some of the lighter wreckage. It was clothed in the olive-drab uniform coat of an aviator. She seized the gauntleted hand and began to tug with all her strength.

“Where are you going, Amy?” she cried. “Come and help me.”

“Going to get the lawn hose. We’ll put out the fire, Jess.”

“But let’s get this man out first. He may roast while you are wetting down the plane with the hose.”

This seemed practical even to Amy. She lent her strength to Jessie’s and fortunately they were able to drag the unconscious pilot forth. He wore the usual helmet, the tabs of which were fastened over his ears. It was plain that he had been up to a high altitude before making this unfortunate swoop that had ended so disastrously.

“Is he dead? Oh! is he dead?” murmured Jessie Norwood.

“Oh, I hope not,” gasped her chum. “Who is he? Anybody we know, Jess?”

Jessie waved her away. “Run for Chapman or the gardener. Where can they be? Let them get out the hose and put out this fire. Do, Amy!”

“I’ll do that myself,” declared the other girl. “I thought of it first,” and away she went to where the hose was reeled beside the house-plug.

Mrs. Norwood had come out on the veranda, and, seeing that the girls were doing all they could, had herself gone in search of Chapman or the gardener. Jessie unfastened the aviator’s helmet and carefully removed it.

One look at the face of the victim of the accident, and the girl emitted a scream that startled her mother, just then coming around the corner of the house.

“For pity’s sake, child!” she cried. “Is it as bad as that? Come away, Jessie. Here comes Chapman. Let him attend to it!”

Chapman ran hastily to the spot—just in time, in fact, to get the stream of water from the hose right between the shoulders. Amy was rather reckless with the hose. But she soon got it trained upon the burning petrol tank. That scattered the flames at first, but in the end it extinguished the fire.

Chapman, meanwhile, leaned above the injured pilot and began an examination of his body. The victim remained unconscious, and Jessie continued to stare at his pale countenance, not offering to help the chauffeur in his examination. She had recognized the young man lying there on the ground.

“Oh, Momsy! it’s Mark Stratford,” the girl murmured. “Poor Mark! What will his father do if he’s killed?”

“‘The millionaire kid’,” the chauffeur said, kneeling beside the injured pilot. Nor did he use the nickname given to Mark Stratford by his college chums in any tone of scorn. The heir to the great Stratford estate, as well as to the controlling interest in the Stratford Electric Company at Stratfordtown, was well liked by everybody who knew him. Then Chapman added: “It’s a bad tumble he took, Miss Jessie; but he ain’t dead.”

“Chapman,” said Mrs. Norwood, “you and Bill bring him in. We will take him up to bed.” She started the women servants to making indoor preparations. She, too, knew the millionaire’s son and liked him.

“Jessie,” Mrs. Norwood commanded her daughter, “go to the ’phone and telephone to Doctor Ankers. Perhaps you had better call Doctor Leffert, too.”

“Yes, Momsy. And I’ll get Stratfordtown on the line and tell somebody there—somebody of the family, I mean.”

Jessie and her mother hurried in ahead of the men bearing Mark Stratford. Amy, having extinguished the fire and now having nothing better to do, followed after, carrying the discarded flying helmet.

Jessie ran at once to the telephone. “It would be great,” she thought, “if we had a sending instrument as well as a receiving radio set. We could broadcast the news of Mark’s accident and his family would get it promptly.”

However, she had enough to do during the next few minutes calling the two doctors and telling them what was wanted of them and urging the necessity for haste. It took longer to reach the Stratford home beyond Stratfordtown. And there Jessie could talk only with a servant whose sympathy, if he felt any, for his young master’s case was hidden behind the unemotional exterior of the well-trained English servant.

She knew that Mark Stratford had no mother, and although his father and his other relatives might consider him the apple of their eyes, they were not likely to influence him against taking risks. Mark, had he had a mother, would possibly, for her sake, have been a little less reckless in his activities as an aviator after the war was ended.

“And just see what has come of it, poor fellow,” murmured the Roselawn girl, as she hung up the receiver and enclosed the telephone instrument again in the bisque doll which housed it on the hall table. “Suppose he is killed or seriously hurt? Dear, dear! What a frightful tragedy!”

“It’s all of that,” half sobbed Amy, who was standing behind her chum. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “And your radio antenna, Jess, is completely wrecked.”

The next two hours was rather a trying time for everybody at the Norwood place. That brought the time around to six o’clock, and Mr. Norwood himself had returned from town, Chapman having driven down to the station to meet him.

Meanwhile the two physicians had come together to the house and had made a searching examination of the young fellow who had descended so abruptly out of the air and crashed upon the Norwood lawn.

“He is a lucky chap,” Dr. Ankers declared, when the examination had been completed and it was found that not a bone was broken.

But Mark was painfully bruised and it might be possible, as both doctors agreed, that he was injured internally. It seemed all but impossible that an aeroplane could be so effectually crushed and its pilot not be more seriously hurt.

Soon after Mr. Norwood arrived home a big limousine came tearing along Bonwit Boulevard and halted before the Norwood house. A big man with ruddy face and white hair got out before the chauffeur could alight, and strode up the path to the front door of the lawyer’s home. Jessie and Amy were on the veranda. They had never seen Mark’s father before but——

“It must be Mr. Stratford, he’s so handsome,” whispered Amy swiftly. “He’s a senator, too, you know, Jess.”

The maid had just come downstairs to announce that Mark had spoken for the first time, and Jessie went eagerly forward to meet the big man and tell him the good news.

“He has spoken, Mr. Stratford. The doctors say he hasn’t broken a bone.”

“That’s good!” exclaimed the caller. “What ran into him?”

“Why—why, nothing ran into him!” Jessie exclaimed. “How could it?”

“I don’t know how it could, but I am always expecting something to,” declared the big man. “Mark is a good driver— By the way, young lady, what’s all that mess on your lawn?” and he pointed to the wrecked aeroplane.

“Why, that’s _it_!” gasped Jessie.

“Er—indeed?” said Mr. Stratford.

Amy suddenly found her voice. As usual, she used it to laugh with.

“My goodness!” she cried, when she could speak. “He thinks Mark was driving his car.”

“Well, wasn’t he?” Mr. Stratford demanded. “I have always been afraid that that racer would bring him to grief.”

“Look! Look!” gasped Amy hysterically. She pointed to the wreck of the aeroplane. “He—he was driving that.”

“What under the sun was it?” murmured Mr. Stratford. Then, suddenly, he realized the nature of the wreck. “Not the plane?”

“Yes, Mr. Stratford,” Jessie interposed. “He fell with that thing. But, as I tell you, Doctor Ankers and Doctor Leffert say they can find nothing very serious the matter with him.”

There was a quizzical twist to the corners of Mr. Stratford’s lips as there was to Mark’s. Jessie thought that he must be just as likable as his son was. And now that he was reassured about Mark’s accident and his condition, he gave more attention to the two girls.

“You are Robert Norwood’s girl, I have no doubt?” he said to Jessie. “You have some look of your father. I have met him on the Country Club links.”

“Yes, sir, I am Jessie Norwood,” Jessie said, flushing a little. As she expressed it to Momsy, she just _would_ blush, no matter who spoke to her! “And this,” Jessie added, turning to her chum, “is Amy Drew, who lives across the street.”

“And belongs to Wilbur Drew, I have no doubt?”

“Only half, if you please,” Amy said demurely. “Mrs. Sarah Drew likewise claims a share in me.”

Mr. Stratford seemed much amused by this statement. But he turned with some impatience toward the house door. Mr. Norwood was just coming out.

“Glad you are here, Mr. Stratford,” said the lawyer. “They tell me the boy has been asking for you. The consensus of opinion is that shock and a general shaking up is about the worst that has happened to him.”

“He always was a lucky young scamp,” replied Mr. Stratford. “And if there is a reckless thing to do, he’ll find it. Yet I’m sort of proud of him, Norwood. There aren’t many boys of his age that have done the things he has.”

“I grant you that,” said Mr. Norwood, yet doubtfully. “Just the same,” and he pinched Jessie’s ear, who stood beside him, “I am glad my son is a girl.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Stratford. “I have been noticing that both these girls seem to be aping the boys pretty closely as to dress. And very fetching costumes they are.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Amy, with vast coolness (Jessie was for the moment confused), “we have to clear up Jessie’s radio aerial and hang it up again. That old aeroplane smashed right through it when it fell. That is how we come to be wearing our radio suits, Mr. Stratford.”

She tucked her hand in the crook of her chum’s elbow and led her away. They heard the gentlemen laughing as they went indoors. Jessie was secretly very glad that her father and Mr. Stratford _could_ laugh. Suppose Mark had been killed!

“Mrs. Norwood says that you and Mark are perfectly welcome here,” Mr. Norwood said to the senator. “If the doctors think he should remain, I think you had better leave him.”

Both Dr. Ankers and Dr. Leffert had stayed to confer with the father of the injured young man. After this conference it was decided that an ambulance should be sent for and Mark removed to his own home. He asked for the girls and seemed to feel that somehow he owed them something for smashing the radio antenna.

“I’ll make it up to you, Miss Jessie,” was one of the last remarks he made as they carried him out of the house that evening. “It’s a shame you should have all that trouble because of me.”

Jessie stood on the veranda as the ambulance rolled away and gravely announced:

“Do you know what I just wish, Amy Drew?”

“I haven’t the first idea. Wish for a million; then if you get it, we’ll go fifty-fifty.”

“Nothing so common as that,” pursued Jessie, with continued gravity. “Money isn’t everything in this world. No,” she went on. “My thought is of something entirely different. I just wish——”

“So you do. What is your wish, honey?”

“If Mark Stratford thinks he owes us something for tumbling down here and smashing our aerial, I wish he would make it up to us in just one way.”

Amy arched her brows and looked curiously at her friend. “I don’t get your meaning at all, Jess,” she said.

“Why, we’ve talked enough about it, Amy. It is in his power—and in his father’s power—to do us the greatest favor.”

“Goodness me, Jess! It _must_ be a million dollars you are talking about.”