As it went up, the radio, a sending set, broadcast certain information about the weather. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know all about that. All I knew at the time was that attached to the radio was a card and on the card was written: ‘If the finder of this radio will return it to C. K. Kennedy at Ferndale he will receive a five dollar reward!’”

“And you needed a new spring dress, so you returned the radio.”

“Exactly! How did you ever guess that?” They joined in a merry laugh.

“But I’m not joking.” Sally’s face sobered. “It’s every bit true.”

“Of course,” was the quick response. “Tell me the rest.”

“Well, you know, that nice old man, C. K. Kennedy, had lived in my own town for three years and I’d never heard of him. He owned a tiny house down by the river. Back of the house was his shop, where he invented things.”

“Oh! Then he was an inventor!”

“Sure he is! When I brought him the radio I asked him why he sent it up into the sky. He told me all about it, how he could learn all sorts of things about how cold it would be, when it would rain, and all that just by sending up radios to listen in for him.

“That’s the way it started.” Sally heaved a sigh. “Old C. K.—everyone called him that and I never knew his first name—he was so kind and told me so much that I went back again, lots of times.

“By and by I started helping him. Just doing little things. I told people how good he was with radios and they started bringing them to be fixed. We came to have quite a business. As soon as high school was over I worked there all the time.”

“You must have made quite a lot of money.”

“Oh, no, not so much. You see,” Sally leaned forward, “we were like some very fine surgeons. We charged what people could afford to pay.”

“I see.”

“And there are lots more poor people than rich ones.”

“Always.”

“When a little lame boy came in with a very cheap radio that got the stations all jumbled up, we put in more transformers and tubes, practically made a new radio out of it. Then it worked fine.”

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