Billy flushed. "Well, this ain't exactly mine--yet, Dad! Joe Gary made it and he's going to make another and he says I can use this one until I want to buy it or at least for a while. I have that dollar I was saving and my onions and radishes." "Good gracious!" Barbara laughed, "I suppose we'll live on onions and radishes three times a day." Mr. Lee turned to Billy. "Don't you think, son, it might be better to wait until you have the money to pay Joe? And a little more practice?" "Billy's always spending money on all those foolish things," Barbara put in. "He doesn't seem to want to save and help you!" "Well, say, don't you think those things are foolish! You read all sorts of things how wireless messages save people--" "On sinking ships, yes!" "Well, lots of other ways, too!" Billy's face blazed with wrath. "I'll just show you some time!" "Molly Sawyer's brother knows a boy who is a wireless operator in the Canadian Army and sends messages from trees!" "And if I have a little more practice I can try the troop exams next winter and get a certificate!" "Billy," broke in his mother, "run over to Mrs. Clark's and tell Alice to come home at once. Nora rang the bell for her but she did not hear." "Why, Mother," said Peggy, suddenly alarmed, "Janet Clark was with us this morning!" Janet Clark was Alice's closest playmate. The two families lived in adjoining houses. Mrs. Lee had returned to the house at noon and Nora had told her that she had last seen Alice running through the gate between the two gardens. It was only a worried moment before Billy came home to say that Alice had not been there that morning! It was not like Alice to be long away from home. Mrs. Lee, hiding her concern, directed the children to scour the neighborhood. Not until they had come back from the club and beach and neighboring houses and reported no sign of her did the mother and father openly express alarm. The children saw a look come into their mother's face that it had never worn before! Like a shock its agony pierced into each child's heart! Very white, Billy rushed off to enlist the services of his boy friends for a thorough search of the beach. Barbara, with her father, started in the motor for Middletown. "I will stay here near the telephone," Mrs. Lee had said in answer to her husband's quick, concerned look. Peggy came running down the stairs. "Her bathing suit is gone, Mammy, and her pink apron--" "And her penny bank is broken!" Keineth held out in her hands the pieces of the china pig which had held Alice's collection of pennies. "It's all broken!" and, miserably, Keineth looked down at the fragments. "We will find her," said Mrs. Lee, bravely, putting an arm about each child. "You girlies must stay with me and help me."