Tom Swift and His Wireless Message | Page 7

wire, and then I'll call back here for you. I'll take you and the new cook back home flying."
"All right, but don't fly so fast. The cook may get frightened, and leave before she has a chance to make an apple turnover."
"I'll go slower. I'll be back in fifteen minutes," called Tom, as he swung the car out away from the curb, while Mary Nestor went into the intelligence office.
Tom wrote and sent this message to Mr. Hostner Fenwick, of Philadelphia:
"Will come on to-morrow in my aeroplane, and aid you all I can. Will not promise to make your electric airship fly, though. Father sends regards."
"Just rush that, please," he said to the telegraph agent, and the latter, after reading it over, remarked:
"It'll rush itself, I reckon, being all about airships, and things like that," and he laughed as Tom paid him.
Selecting several sizes of piano wire of great strength, to use as extra guy-braces on the Butterflv, Tom re-entered his electric car, and hastened back to the intelligence office, where he had left his friend. He saw her standing at the front door, and before he could alight, and go to her, Miss Nestor came cut to meet him.
"Oh, Tom!" she exclaimed, with a little tragic gesture, "what do you think?"
"I don't know," he answered good-naturedly. "Does the new cook refuse to come unless you do away with apple turnovers?"
"No, it isn't that. I have engaged a real treasure, I'm sure, but as soon as I mentioned that you would take us home in the electric automobile, she flatly refused to come. She said walking was the only way she would go. She hasn't been in this country long. But the worst of it is that a rich woman has just telephoned in for a cook, and if I don't get this one away, the rich lady may induce her to come to her house, and I'll be without one! Oh, what shall I do?" and poor Mary looked quite distressed.
"Humph! So she's afraid of electric autos; eh?" mused Tom. "That's queer. Leave it to me, Mary, and perhaps I can fix it. You want to get her away from here in a hurry; don't you?"
"Yes, because servants are so scarce, that they are engaged almost as soon as they register at the intelligence office. I know the one I have hired is suspicious of me, since I have mentioned your car, and she'll surely go with Mrs. Duy Puyster when she comes. I'm sorry I spoke of the automobile."
"Well, don't worry. It's partly my fault, and perhaps I can make amends. I'll talk to the new cook," decided the young inventor.
"Oh, Tom, I don't believe it will do any good. She won't come, and all my girl friends will arrive shortly." Miss Nestor was quite distressed.
"Leave it to me," suggested the lad, with an assumed confidence he did not feel. He left the car, and walked toward the office. Entering it, with Miss Nestor in his wake, he saw a pleasant-faced Irish girl, sitting on a bench, with a bundle beside her.
"And so you don't want to ride in an auto?" began Tom.
"No, an' it's no use of the likes of you askin' me, either," answered the girl, but not impudently. "I am afeered of thim things, an' I won't work in a family that owns one."
"But we don't own one," said Mary.
The girl only sniffed.
"It is the very latest means of traveling," Tom went on, "and there is absolutely no danger. I will drive slowly."
"No!" snapped the new cook.
Tom was rather at his wits' ends. At that moment the telephone rang, and Tom and Mary, listening, could hear the proprietress of the intelligence office talking to Mrs. Duy Puyster over the wire.
"We must get her away soon," whispered Mary, with a nod at the Irish girl, "or we'll lose her."
Tom was thinking rapidly, but no plan seemed to come to him. A moment later one of the assistants of the office led out from a rear room another Irish girl,--who, it seems, had just engaged herself to work in the country.
"Good-by, Bridget," said this girl, to the one Mary Nestor had hired. "I'm off now. The carriage has just come for me. I'm goin' away in style."
"Good luck, Sarah," wished Bridget.
Tom looked out of the window. A dilapidated farm wagon, drawn by two rusty-looking horses, just drawing up at the curb.
"There is your employer, Sarah," said the proprietress of the office. "You will have a nice ride to the country and I hope you will like the place."
A typical country farmer alighted from the wagon, leaving a woman, evidently his wife, or the seat. He called out:
"I'll git th' servant-gal, 'Mandy, an' we'll drive right out hum. Then you won't have such hard work any more."
"An' so