“C. Q.” or, In the Wireless House
in electricity and had worked an amateur “wireless” between the roof of the vicarage and that of the village tinsmith who was the father of his childhood’s companion, Tommy Burcher. Tommy was the only one of his friends with whom he still kept in constant communication and from whom he learned the comings and goings of the Hon. Evelyn: how she now had her hair up and looked a ripper; how the family had taken her up to London and brought her out with a great party at Carlton Terrace; how she had been presented at Court; and how they had been filling the house with old bucks and young bucks, and been having party after party, until Tommy (who was not invited) said it quite turned his stomach. But never a word from the Hon. Evelyn, who, according to the ill-spelled and worse-expressed missives of the correspondent, was growing more of a stunner daily. As each letter was received and read in the privacy of the wireless house, Micky would grind his teeth, swear at the Earl and the vicar, and then smoke his pipe furiously for about an hour—after which life resumed its ordinary color. A letter had come that very day, with the usual consequences.
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