ephone here in the hut would be an excellent idea. But what I don't
see is why you don't do the job yourselves."

"Oh, we could do the work all right if there wasn't danger of our
infringing the patent of the telephone company," was Laurie's impish
reply. "If we should get into a lawsuit there would be no end of
trouble, you know. I guess we'd much better have the thing installed in
the regular way."

"I guess so too!" came from his father.

"You'll really have it put in, Dad?" cried Laurie.

"Sure!"

"That will be bully, corking!" Laurie declared. "You're mighty good,
Dad."

"Pooh! Nonsense!" his father protested, as he shot a quick glance of
tenderness toward the boy. "A telephone over here will be a useful
thing for us all. I may want to call Ted up myself sometimes. We never
can tell when an emergency may arise."

Within the following week the telephone was in place and although Ted
had not minded his seclusion, or thought he had not, he suddenly found
that the instrument gave him a very comfortable sense of nearness to
his family and to the household at Pine Lea. He and Laurie chattered
like magpies over the wire and were far worse, Mrs. Fernald asserted,
than any two gossipy boarding-school girls. Moreover, Ted was now able
to speak each day with his father at the Fernald shipping rooms and by
this means keep in closer touch with his family. As for Mr. Wharton, he
marvelled that a telephone to the shack had not been put in at the
outset.

"It is not a luxury," he insisted. "It's a necessity! An indispensable
part of the farm equipment!"

Certainly in the days to come it proved its worth!

CHAPTER IX

THE STORY OF THE FIRST TELEPHONE

"I am going down to Freeman's Falls this afternoon to get some rubber
tape," Ted remarked to Laurie, as the two boys and the tutor were
eating a picnic lunch in Ted's cabin one Saturday.

"Oh, make somebody else do your errand and stay here," Laurie begged.
"Anybody can buy that stuff. Some of the men must be going to the
Falls. Ask Wharton to make them do your shopping."

"Perhaps Ted had other things to attend to," ventured Mr. Hazen.

"No, I hadn't," was the prompt reply.

"In that case I am sure any of the men would be glad to get whatever
you please," the tutor declared.

"Save your energy, old man," put in Laurie. "Electrical supplies are
easy enough to buy when you know what you want."

"They are now," Mr. Hazen remarked, with a quiet smile, "but