Mrs. Carlin protested from the floor below. “Joe! Do you have to blast down the walls?” The boy turned down the volume. Wide awake, he sat on the side of the bed. How did you become a radio actor? Then he remembered that this was Saturday. Nothing but orchestras, and singing and the Woman’s Club program. Yesterday the _City Boy_ program, with Sonny Baker in the lead, had gone off the air for the summer. He turned a button and the radio was still. In envious excitement his thoughts stayed with Sonny. Every Sunday on the Crunchy Bread show, every Wednesday night on the Perfect-Burning Coal program, and five times a week, Monday through Friday, with _City Boy_. Two hundred dollars a week, easily. Last month the _Morning Journal_ had estimated that two hundred thousand listeners listened to the _City Boy_ show. Money and fame—there was a combination! And Sonny Baker was only about eighteen years old. “My age,” said Joe Carlin, lacing his shoes. How had Sonny broken in? How did anybody break into radio? How did you climb to the spot where people watched a clock for your program and you earned two hundred dollars a week? The photograph of Fancy Dan Carlin mocked him from the bureau. Fancy Dan Carlin, actor. There the Fancy one was, rakish silk hat, jaunty cane, immaculate tails, looking as though he might come dancing gaily right out of the silver frame. “I guess I’ve got show business in my blood, Uncle Dan,” Joe said, and remembered a routine his uncle had taught him last summer. His feet became sharp castanets against the bedroom floor. “Joe!” Joe sighed. He lifted a shirt from a chair and under it found part of the costume he had worn in last night’s high-school play. He opened the door. “Did Dad leave the _Journal_, Mother?” “It’s here.” Joe came downstairs. “What kind of press did we get?” “Fancy Dan Carlin speaking,” Kate Carlin said plaintively. Suddenly she began to laugh. There was something so rich, so special in her laughter that, somehow, the boy laughed, too. “That’s show business talk, Mother. A show gets a good press or a bad press.” “You’re not in show business, Joe. Or must I remind you?” The boy caught himself in time. He had almost blurted that he intended to go into show business. A headline in the _Journal_ said: Joe Carlin Stars in Annual Hi Show Hunched in the breakfast nook, he read every word of the story: “An audience of eight hundred that packed the Northend High School last night—” What was eight hundred when Sonny Baker played to two hundred thousand? He carried dishes to the sink and asked a tentative question. “Don’t you think radio’s swell, Mother?” “Not when I get it for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Sometimes you tune in for a noisy midnight snack.” “I mean dramatic sketches,” Joe said hastily. “Aren’t they swell?” “Some of them.”