Billy
were able to get a concert or lecture now and then, Ma insisted they
were bluffing her. She listened in but wasn't convinced, declaring
they had fastened a victrola to the receivers and that such sounds
never could come through the air. Finally they did succeed in getting
her to half believe they were telling her the truth and were not just
working her for money. But when they tried to explain the outfit to
her in detail, she put her hands over her ears, protesting that they
were wasting their breath to tell her of damped and undamped waves,
detectors, and generators. With that they gave up further attempts to
educate her."

Both boys chuckled.

"But she must be proud of your brother now," asserted Dick.

"Oh, she is--tremendously, although what she chiefly thinks about is
the danger Bob is in of getting struck by lightning or electrocuted."

Achilles, who had been pursuing some sandpipers along the rim of the
surf and sent them circling into the air, now raced back to his
friends with a sharp bark of salutation and Dick bent to pat the
shaggy head.

"So really," reflected he, "your brother taught himself wireless."

"Not wholly. He simply laid a foundation," the other boy explained.
"He could never have taken a job on what he had picked up because,
you see, he knew nothing of sending messages, was ignorant of all the
rules an operator has to have at his tongue's end, and had no very
thorough knowledge of electricity. It was not like a complete
training, by any means. The war gave him that. When it broke out he
enlisted in the navy, and because he was partially equipped in radio
they sent him off posthaste to a wireless school. At the time he was
crazy because his dream was to get across and be in the fighting. To
sit at home studying was the last thing he wanted to do. Later,
though, when he began to see what a big part wireless was playing in
the scrimmage, he commenced to be more resigned to his lot. Besides he
got his chance before long, for he worked into being a crackerjack at
speed and passed his exams so well that he had no trouble in winning
his first-class operator's certificate.

"There are grades of radio men, you know, just as there are grades of
everything else. There are the sharks, or first-class chaps, who are
able to pass every sort of test on the adjustment of apparatus and how
to use it; who can both send and receive messages at the rate of at
least twenty words a minute, and who can o