"Radio," said Bob, and laid his hand lovingly on the apparatus. "If it means a lot to us, just think how much more it would mean to some one who hasn"t a thing to do all day but sit and think. Why, I don"t suppose any of us who can see can begin to realize what it would mean not to be able even to read the daily newspaper."
The others stared at Bob, and slowly his meaning sank home.
"I get you," said Joe slowly. "And say, let me tell you, it"s a great idea, Bob. It wouldn"t be so bad to be blind if you could have the daily news read to you every day----"
"And listen to the latest on crops," added Jimmy.
"To say nothing of the latest jazz," finished Herb, with a grin.
"Well, why doesn"t this blind man get himself a set?" asked Jimmy practically. "I should think every blind person in the country would want to own one."
"I suppose every one of them does," said Bob. "And Doctor Dale said the other day that he thought the time would come when charities for the blind would install radio as a matter of humanity, and that prices of individual sets would be so low that all the blind could afford them.
The blind are many of them old, you know, and pretty poor."
"You mean," said Herb slowly, "that most of the blind folks who really need radio more than anybody else can"t afford it? Say, that doesn"t seem fair, does it?"
"It isn"t fair!" cried Bob, adding, eagerly: "I tell you what I thought we could do. There"s that old set of mine! It doesn"t seem much to us now, beside our big one, but I bet that McNulty would think it was a gold mine."
"Hooray for Bob!" cried Herb irrepressibly. "Once in a while he really does get a good idea in his head. When do we start installing this set in the McNulty mansion, boys?"
"As soon as you like," answered Bob. "Tomorrow"s Sat.u.r.day, so we could start early in the morning. It will probably take us some time to rig up the antenna."
The boys were enthusiastic about the idea, and they wasted no time putting it into execution. That very night they looked up the old set, examining it to make sure it was in working order.
When they told their families what they proposed to do, their parents were greatly pleased.
"It does my heart good," said Mr. Layton to his wife, after Bob had gone up to bed, "to see that those boys are interested in making some one besides themselves happy."
"They"re going to make fine men, some day," answered Mrs. Layton softly.
The boys arrived at the McNulty cottage so early the next morning that they met Maggie McNulty on her way to collect the day"s wash.
When they told her what they were going to do she was at first too astonished to speak and then threatened to fall upon their necks in her grat.i.tude.
"Shure, if ye can bring some sunshine into my poor old father"s dark life," she told them in her rich brogue, tears in her eyes, "then ye"ll shure win the undyin" grat.i.tude uv Maggie McNulty."
It was a whole day"s job, and the boys worked steadily, only stopping long enough to rush home for a bit of lunch.
They had tried to explain what they were doing to Adam McNulty, but the old man seemed almost childishly mystified. It was with a feeling of dismay that the boys realized that, in all probability, this was the first time the blind man had ever heard the word radio. It seemed incredible to them that there could be anybody in the world who did not know about radio.
However, if Adam McNulty was mystified, he was also delightedly, pitifully excited. He followed the boys out to the cluttered back yard where they were rigging up the aerial, listening eagerly to their chatter and putting in a funny word now and then that made them roar with laughter.
Bob brought him an empty soap box for a seat and there the old man sat hour after hour, despite the fact that there was a chill in the air, blissfully happy in their companionship. He had been made to understand that something pleasant was being done for him, but it is doubtful if he could have asked for any greater happiness than just to sit there with somebody to talk to and crack his jokes with.
They were good jokes too, full of real Irish wit, and long before the set was ready for action the boys had become fond of the old fellow.
"He"s a dead game sport," Joe said to Bob, in that brief interval when they had raced home for lunch. "I bet I"d be a regular old crab, blind like that."
Mrs. Layton put up an appetizing lunch for the blind man, topping it off with a delicious homemade lemon pie and a thermos bottle full of steaming coffee.
The way the old man ate that food was amazing even to Jimmy. Maggie was too busy earning enough to keep them alive to bother much with dainties.
At any rate, Adam ate the entire lemon pie, not leaving so much as a crumb.
"I thought I was pretty good on feeding," whispered Joe, in a delighted aside, "but I never could go that old bird. He"s got me beat a mile."
"Well," said Jimmy complacently, "I bet I"d tie with him."
If the boys had wanted any reward for that day of strenuous work, they would have had it when, placing the earphones upon his white head, they watched the expression of McNulty"s face change from mystification to wonder, then to beatific enjoyment.
He listened motionless while the exquisite music flooded his starved old soul. Toward the end he closed his eyes and tears trickled from beneath the lids down his wrinkled face. He brushed them off impatiently and the boys noticed that his hand was trembling.
It was a long, long time before he seemed to be aware that there was any one in the room with him. He seemed to have completely forgotten the boys who had bestowed this rare gift upon him.
After a while, coming out of his dream, the old man began fumbling with the headphones as if he wanted to take them off, and Bob helped him. The man tried to speak, but made hard work of it. Emotion choked him.
"Shure, an" I don"t know what to make of it at all, at all," he said at last, in a quivering voice. "Shure an" I thought the age of miracles was pa.s.sed. I"m only an ignorant old man, with no eyes at all; but you lads have given me something that"s near as good. Shure an" it"s an old sinner I am, for shure. Many"s the day I"ve sat here, prayin" the Lord would give me wan more minute o" sight before I died, an" it was unanswered my prayers wuz, I thought. It"s grateful I am to yez, lads.
It"s old Adam McNulty"s blessin" ye"ll always have. An" now will yez put them things in my ears? It"s heaven"s own angels I"d like to be hearin"
agin. That"s the lad--ah!"
And while the beatific expression stole once more over his blind old face the boys stole silently out.
CHAPTER X
THE ESCAPED CONVICT
The boys saw a good deal of Adam McNulty in the days that followed, and the change in the old man was nothing short of miraculous.
He no longer sat in the bare kitchen rocking and smoking his pipe, dependent upon some pa.s.ser-by for his sole amus.e.m.e.nt. He had radio now, and under the instruction of the boys he had become quite expert in managing the apparatus. Although he had no eyes, his fingers were extraordinarily sensitive and they soon learned to handle the set intelligently.
His daughter Maggie, whose grat.i.tude to the boys knew no bounds, looked up the radio program in the paper each day and carefully instructed her father as to just when the news reports were given out, the story reading, concerts, and so forth.
And so the old blind man lived in a new world--or rather, the old world which he had ceased to live in when he became blind--and he seemed actually to grow younger day by day. For radio had become his eyes.
Doctor Dale heard of this act of kindness on the part of the boys and he was warm in his praise.
"Radio," he told the boys one day when he met them on the street, "is a wonderful thing for those of us that can see, but for the blind it is a miracle. You boys have done an admirable thing in your kindness to Adam McNulty, and I hope that, not only individuals, but the government itself will see the possibilities of so great a charity and follow your example."
The boys glowed with pride at the doctor"s praise, and then and there made the resolve that whenever they came across a blind person that person should immediately possess a radio set if it lay within their power to give it to him.
On this particular day when so many things happened the boys were walking down Main Street, talking as usual of their sets and the marvelous progress of radio.
Although it was still early spring, the air was as warm almost as it would be two months later. There was a smell of damp earth and pushing gra.s.s in the air, and the boys, sniffing hungrily, longed suddenly for the freedom of the open country.
"Buck and his bunch have it all their own way," said Herb discontentedly.