is
horrible jokes, and I was trying to make the punishment fit the crime. I'm
awfully sorry."

"You look it," snorted Jimmy, still trying to get the remainder of the
sand out of his mouth. "You look as though your heart was broken, sitting
there and grinning like a monkey."

"Cross my heart and hope to die, I didn't mean to," declared Bob. "I
wouldn't have disturbed your innocent slumbers for anything in the
world."

"Never mind, Jimmy," put in Herb. "They say that every one has got to eat
a peck of dirt before they die, and you might as well start in early."

"I guess I got my whole peck then," grumbled Jimmy, as he rubbed his mouth
vigorously with his handkerchief. "I feel like a chicken with sand in its
craw."

"You ought to feel pretty good then," replied Herb, "for they eat it
because they like it."

"You're the cause of it all," said Jimmy. "When you try to be funny again,
do it when I'm not around. I'll bet the joke was a rotten one, anyway."

"Shall I tell it to you?" asked Herb hopefully.

"Not unless you're prepared to die," replied Jimmy, and Herb forebore to
add insult to injury.

"Now as to this lightning arrester," resumed Bob, leaving Jimmy to regain
his equanimity. "We've got to put it up, for the regulations require it
and we ought to have done it before."

Jimmy pricked up his ears but said nothing.

"I don't think there's really much need of it," objected Joe. "It's too
nice an afternoon to work. We've got a lightning rod on the cottage
anyway."

"It isn't so much for the cottage as the set," said Bob. "If the lightning
got into the receiving set it would make short work of it. Now here's the
kind of lightning switch we'll have to have," and he launched into an
earnest discussion of a type that was required by the radio regulations.

Jimmy took no part in the discussions, but they attributed this to a touch
of grouchiness and gave him time to get over it. Bob after a while
glanced at him, and saw that he wore a broad grin on his face.

"What's the joke, Jimmy?" he asked, a little suspiciously.

For only answer Jimmy broke into a peal of laughter.

"Of all the boobs," he chortled.

They looked at him and then at each other in bewilderment.

"Do you think the sun has affected his brain?" asked Herb, with affected
anxiety.

"It might have, if he had any brain to be affected," replied Joe, in the
same strain.

"Let us in on it, Jimmy," pleaded Bob. "Don't be selfish and keep it a