Radio Boys Cronies/Chapter XX

It was truly astonishing what well organized labor could do under intelligent direction; the boys had a fine example of this before them and a fine lesson in the accomplishment. The new garage grew into a new and somewhat larger building, on the site of the old, almost over night. There were three eight-hour shifts of men and two foremen, with the supervising architect and Mr. Grier apparently always on the job. As soon as the second floor was laid, the roof on and the sheathing in place, Bill and Gus moved in. The men gave them every aid and Mr. Grier gave special attention to building their benches, trusses, a drawing-board stand, shelving and tool chests. Then, how those new radio receivers did come on!

Grace and Skeets were given little odd jobs during the very few hours of their insistent helping. They varnished, polished, oiled, cleaned copper wire, unpacked material, even swept up the _débris_ left by the carpenters; at least, they did until Skeets managed to fall headlong down about one-half of the unfinished stairway and to sprain her ankle. Then Grace's loyalty compelled her attention to her friend.

Mr. Hooper breezed in from time to time, but never to take a hand; to do so would have seemed quite out of place, though the old gentleman laughingly made an excuse for this:

"Lads, I ain't no tinker man; never was. Drivin' a pesky nail's a huckleberry above my persimmon. Cattle is all I know, an' I kin still learn about them, I reckon. But I know what I kin see an' hear an', b'jinks, I'm still doubtin' I'm ever goin' to hear that there Eddy's son do this talkin'. But get busy, lads; get busy!"

"Oh, fudge, Dad! Can't you see they're dreadfully busy? You can't hurry them one bit faster." Grace was ever just.

"No," said Skeets, who had borrowed Bill's crutch to get into the shop for a little while. "No, Mr. Hooper; if they were to stay up all night, go without eats and work twenty-five hours a day they couldn't do any--" And just then the end of the too-much inclined crutch skated outward and the habitually unfortunate girl dropped kerplunk on the floor. Gus and Grace picked her up. She was not hurt by her fall. Her very plumpness had saved her.

"For goodness' sake, Skeets, are you ever going to get the habit of keeping yourself upright?" asked Grace, who laughed harder than the others, except Skeets herself; the stout girl generally got the utmost enjoyment out of her own troubles.

Quiet restored, Mr. Hooper returned to his subject.

"I reckon you lads, when you git this thing made that's goin' to hoodoo the air, will be startin' in an' tryin' somethin' else; eh?" he ventured, grinning.

"Later, perhaps, but not just yet," Bill replied. "Not until we can manage to learn a lot more, Gus and I. Mr. Grier says that the competition of brains nowadays is a lot sharper than it was in Edison's young days, and even he had to study and work a lot before he really did any big inventing. Professor Gray says that a technical education is best for anyone who is going to do things, though it is a long way from making a fellow perfect and must be followed up by hard practice."

"And we can wait, I guess," put in Gus.

"Until we can manage in some way to scrape together enough cash to buy books and get apparatus for experiments and go on with our schooling."

"We want more physics and especially electricity," said Gus.

"And other knowledge as well, along with that," Bill amended.

"I reckon you fellers is right," said Mr. Hooper, "but I don't know anything about it. I quit school when I was eleven, but that ain't sayin' I don't miss it. If I had an eddication now, like you lads is goin' to git, er like the Perfesser has, I'd give more'n half what I own. Boys that think they're smart to quit school an' go to work is natchal fools. A feller may git along an' make money, but he'd make a heap more an' be a heap happier, 'long of everything else, if he'd got a schoolin'. An' any boy that's got real sand in his gizzard can buckle down to books an' get a schoolin', even if he don't like it. What I'm a learnin' nowadays makes me know that a feller can make any old study int'restin' if he jes' sets down an' looks at it the right way."

"That's what Gus and I think. There are studies we don't like very much, but we can make ourselves like them for we've got to know a lot about them."

"Grammar, for instance," said Gus.

"Sure. It is tiresome stuff, learning a lot of rules that work only half. But if a fellow is going to be anybody and wants to stand in with people, he's got to know how to talk correctly and write, too." Bill's logic was sound.

"Daddy should have had a drilling in grammar," commented Grace, laughing.

"Oh, you!" blurted Skeets. "Mr. Hooper can talk so that people understand him--and when you _do_ talk," she turned to the old gentleman, "I notice folks are glad to listen, and so is Grace."

"But, my dear," protested the subject of criticism, "they'd listen better an' grin less if I didn't sling words about like one o' these here Eye-talians shovelin' dirt."

"You just keep a-shovelin', Mr. Hooper, your own way," said Bill, "and if we catch anybody even daring to grin at you, why, I'll have Gus land on them with his famous grapple!"

Mr. Hooper threw back his coat, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his big, white vest and swelled out his chest.

"Now, listen to that! An' this from a lad who ain't got a thing to expect from me an' ain't had as much as he's a-givin' me, either--an' knows it. But that's nothin' else but Simon pure frien'ship, I take it. An' Gus, here, him an' Bill, they think about alike; eh, Gus?" Gus nodded and the old gentleman continued, addressing his remarks to his daughter and Skeets:

"Now, if I know anything at all 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!"