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CHAPTER IV – UNCERTAINTIES

“It is lucky Henrietta went away before papa came,” observed Amy, after they had discussed the strange matter at some length. “She certainly would have been mad to learn that Belle and Sally were likely to visit what she calls her island, without any invitation from her.”

“What do you suppose it all means?” asked Jessie.

“She must have heard some mixed-up account of an island that belonged to her family,” Nell said, “and got it twisted. I can’t see it any other way. But I must go home now, girls. The Reverend and the children need looking after by this time. Good-bye.”

Mr. Drew did not explain until evening about his previous knowledge of the island in question. Then he came over to smoke his after-dinner cigar on the Norwood’s porch, and he and Jessie’s father discussed the matter within the hearing of their two very much interested daughters. When their fathers did not object, Jessie and Amy often “listened in” on business conversations, and this one was certainly important to the minds of the two chums.

“Did Blair telephone you to-day again about that matter?” Mr. Norwood asked his neighbor.

“No. It was Mr. Stratford himself. Takes an interest in Blair’s affairs, you know.”

“It really concerns that Bertha Blair who was of so much value to me in the Ellison will case. You remember?” observed Mr. Norwood.

“And it concerns this little freckle-faced child the girls have had around here so much. Actually, if the thing pans out the way it looks, Norwood, that child has got something coming to her.”

“She has a good deal coming to her if she can prove she is the daughter of Padriac Haney,” said Jessie’s father, with vigor.

“You are inclined to take the matter up?”

“I am. I’ll do all I can. Blair has no money to risk – ”

“He won’t need any,” said Mr. Drew, quite as decisively. “If you can spend your time on it, so can I. It won’t break us, Norwood, to help the child.”

“Not at all,” agreed Mr. Norwood, generously.

“But is it really true, Daddy, that Hackle Island belongs to little Henrietta and Bertha?” asked Jessie.

“A good part of it, apparently. All of the middle of the island,” he returned. “The Government owns Sable Point where the old lighthouse stands and where the radio station is now established. That has been a government reservation for years. At the other end is the Hackle Island Hotel, always popular with a certain class of moneyed people.”

“I have been there,” said Mr. Drew, nodding. “But there is a bunch of bungalows in between – ”

“By the way,” interposed Mr. Norwood, “my wife said something about taking one of those for a month or two. I have the tentative offer of one.”

“O-oh!” gasped Amy, clasping her hands.

Her father laughed outright. “See,” he said to the other lawyer. “You are going to have a guest, if you go there. I can see that.”

“The bungalow is big enough for the girls and their friends,” admitted Jessie’s father.

“That beats the farm!” cried Amy to Jessie.

“It will be nice. And we can take Henrietta and Bertha along.”

“They are going in any case, I hear from Blair,” said Mr. Norwood briskly. “His wife will take them. There is an old farmhouse that belongs to the Haney estate. You see, a part of the bungalow colony and the Club golf course are included in the old Haney place. The real estate men who exploited the island a few years ago did not trouble themselves to get clear title to the land. They made their bit and got out. Now there are two parties laying claim to the middle of the island.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Jessie. “Then it isn’t sure that little Henrietta will get her island? Too bad!”

“Personally I am pretty sure that she will,” said Mr. Norwood, with conviction. “But it will cause a court fight. There is another claimant, as I say.”

“You are right,” agreed Mr. Drew. “And he is a fighter. Ringold never gives up a thing until he has to.”

“Goodness!” breathed Amy. “Not Belle’s father?”

“It is the New Melford Ringold,” said Mr. Drew. “His claim is based upon an old note that the original Padriac Haney gave some money-lender. Ringold bought the paper along with a lot of other fishy documents. You know, he has always been a note shaver.”

“I know something about that,” said Mr. Norwood, grimly. “Don’t worry too much about it. Ringold may have a lot of money, but he won’t spend too much to try to make good a bad claim. He doesn’t throw a sprat to catch a herring; he would only risk a sprat for whale bait,” and he laughed.

However, the two girls had heard quite enough to yield food for chatter for some time to come. Jessie had kept close watch of the time by her wrist-watch. She now beckoned her chum, and they ran indoors and up the stairs to Jessie’s sitting-room.

“It is almost time for the concert from Stratfordtown,” Jessie said. “And Bertha telephoned me yesterday that she hoped to sing to-night.”

“Lucky girl!” said Amy, sighing. “It’s nice to have an uncle who bosses a broadcasting station. But, never mind, Jess, we had fun the time we were on the program. Say! the boys will be home to-morrow.”

“No! Do you mean it?”

“Papa got a wireless. The Marigold now has a real radio telegraph sending and receiving set. Darry says it is great. But, of course, you and I can’t get anything from them because we do not know Morse.”

“Let’s learn!” exclaimed Jessie, excitedly.

“Sometimes when you get your set tuned wrong you hear some of the code. But the telegraph wave-length is much, much longer than the phone lengths. Guess you’d have a job listening in for anything Darry and Burd Ailing would send from that old yacht.”

“We can learn the Morse alphabet, just the same, can’t we?” demanded her chum.

“Now, there you go again!” complained Amy. “Always suggesting something that is work. I don’t want to have to learn a single thing until we go back to school in the fall. Believe me!”

Her emphasis only made Jessie laugh. She adjusted the crystal detector, or cat’s whisker, as the girls called it, and then began to tune the coil until, with the tabs at her ears, she could hear a voice rising out of the void, nearer and nearer, until it seemed speaking directly in her ear:

“With which announcement we begin our evening’s entertainment from the Stratfordtown Station. The first number on the program being – ”

“Do you hear that? It is Mr. Blair himself,” whispered Amy eagerly. “And he says – ”

Jessie held up her hand for silence as the superintendent of the broadcasting station at Stratfordtown went on to announce, “Miss Bertha Blair, who will sing ‘Will o’ the Wisp,’ Mr. Angler being at the piano. I thank you.”

The piano prelude came to the ears of the Roselawn girls almost instantly. Jessie and Amy smiled at each other. They were proud to think that they had something to do with Bertha’s becoming a favorite on the Stratfordtown programs, and likewise that their interest in the girl first served to call the superintendent’s attention to her. In “The Roselawn Girls on the Program” is told of Bertha’s first meeting with her uncle who had never before seen her.

They listened to the hour’s program and then tuned the receiver to get what was being broadcasted from a city station – a talk on economics that interested to a degree even the two high-school girls. For frivolous as Amy usually appeared to be, she was a good scholar and, like Jessie, stood well in her classes.

There was not much but a desire for fun in Amy’s mind the next morning, however, when she ran across the boulevard to the Norwood place. It was right after breakfast, and she wore her middy blouse and short skirt, with canvas ties on her feet. She trilled for Jessie under the radio-room windows:

“You-oo! You-oo! ‘Mary Ann! My Mary Ann! I’ll meet you on the corner!’ Come-on-out!”

Jessie appeared from the breakfast room, and Momsy, as Jessie always called her mother, looked out, too.

“What have you girls on your minds for this morning?” she asked.

“Our new canoe, Mrs. Norwood. You know, we gave the old one to those Dogtown youngsters, and our new one has never been christened yet.”

“Shall I bring a hat?” asked Jessie, hesitatingly.

“What for? To bail out the canoe? Bill says it is perfectly sound and safe,” laughed Amy.

“You are getting wee freckles on your nose, Jessie,” said Mrs. Norwood.

“Why worry?” demanded Amy. “You can never get as many as Hen wears – and her nose isn’t as big as yours.”

“It is by good luck, not good management, that you do not freckle, Amy Drew,” declared her chum. “I’ll take the shade hat.”

“Why not a sunbonnet?” scoffed Amy.

But Jessie laughed and ran out with her hat. It floated behind her, held by the two strings, as she raced her chum down to the boat landing. The Norwood boathouse sheltered several different craft, among others a motor-boat that Amy’s brother, Darrington Drew, owned. But Darry and his chum, Burd Alling, had lost their interest in the Water Thrush since they had been allowed to put into commission, and navigate themselves, the steam-yacht Marigold, which was a legacy to Darry from an uncle now deceased.

The girls got the new canoe out without assistance from the gardener or his helper. They were thoroughly capable out-of-door girls. They had erected the antenna for Jessie’s radio set without any help. Both were good boatmen – “if a girl can be a man,” to quote Amy – and they could handle the Water Thrush as well as the canoe.

They launched and paddled out from the shore in perfect form. The sun was scorching, but there was a tempering breeze. It was therefore cooler out toward the middle of the lake than inshore. The glare of the sun on the water troubled even the thoughtless Amy.

“Oh, aren’t you the wise little owl, Jess Norwood!” she cried. “To think of wearing a sun-hat! And here am I with nothing to shelter me from the torrid rays. I am going to burn and peel and look horrid – I know I shall! I’ll not be fit to go to Hackle Island – if we go.”

“Oh, we’re going, all right!”

“You’re mighty certain, from the way you talk. Has it been really settled? ‘There’s many a slip’ and all that, you know.”

“Father asked Momsy about it at breakfast before he went to town, and she said she had quite made up her mind,” Jessie said. “He will make the arrangements with the owner of the house.”

“Oh, goody! A bungalow?” cried Amy.

“Yes.”

“How big, dear? Can the boys come?”

“Of course. There are fourteen rooms. It is a big place. We will shut up the house here and send down most of the serving people ahead. We shall have at least one good month of salt air.”

“Hooray!” cried Amy, swinging her paddle recklessly. “And I’ve got just the most scrumptious idea, Jess. I’ll tell you – ”

But something unexpected happened just then that quite drove out of Amy Drew’s mind the idea she had to impart to her chum. She brought the paddle she had waved down with an awful smack on the water. The spray spattered all about. Jessie flung herself back to escape some of the inwash, and by so doing her gaze struck upon something on the surface of the lake, far ahead.

“Oh! Oh!” she shrieked. “What is that, Amy? Somebody is drowning!”

CHAPTER V – INTO TROUBLE AND OUT

Amy Drew sat up in the canoe as high as she could and stared ahead. Jessie’s observation suggested trouble; but Amy almost immediately burst out laughing.

“‘Drowning!’” she repeated. “Why, Jess Norwood, you know that you couldn’t drown those Dogtown kids. And if that isn’t some of them – Monty Shannon, and the Costello twins, and the rest of them – I’m much mistaken.”

“But see those barrels and tubs and what-all!” gasped her more serious friend. “Look there! It’s Henrietta!”

The fleet of strange barges that Jessie had first spied included, it seemed, almost every sort of craft that could be improvised. A rainwater barrel led the procession of “boats,” and Montmorency Shannon was in that, paddling with some kind of paddle that he wielded with no little skill.

There were two wooden washtubs in which the Costello twins voyaged. One was much lower in the water than the other, giving evidence of having shipped more water than its mate. In a water-trough that had been filched from somebody’s barnyard was little Henrietta and Charlie Foley.

“They will be overboard!” exclaimed Jessie, anxiously. “Drive ahead, Amy – do!”

The wind was blowing directly in their faces and from the direction of the Dogtown landing, where the flotilla had evidently embarked. The tubs spun around and around, the half-barrel in which Monty Shannon sat tried to perform the same gyrations, but Henrietta and the Foley boy blundered ahead. It was plain to Jessie’s mind that the reckless children could not have sailed in the other direction had they wished to do so.

“What do you come out here for?” she shrieked when the canoe drew near.

“Oh, Miss Jessie, we are going to the Carter place,” sang out Henrietta.

“But the Carter place is down the lake, not up!” exclaimed the exasperated Jessie.

“Yes. But the wind shifted,” said Henrietta.

“Where is your big canoe?” demanded Amy, who could scarcely paddle from laughter, in spite of the evident danger the children were in.

“That is what we started after,” said Montmorency Shannon, his red head sticking out of the barrel like a full-blown hollyhock. “It got away in the night, or somebody let it go, and we saw it away down by the Carter place. So – so we thought we’d go after it.”

“And I warrant your mothers don’t know what you are doing,” Jessie said sternly.

“Oh, they will!” cried Henrietta, virtuously.

“When they miss the washtubs,” put in Amy, with laughter.

“When we tell ’em,” corrected little Henrietta. “And we always tell ’em everything we do.”

“I see. After it is all over,” Jessie commented.

“We-ell,” said Henrietta, pouting, “we can’t tell ’em what we have done before we do it, can we? For we never know ourselves.”

“You certainly cannot beat that for logic,” declared Amy. She drove the head of the canoe to the tub of the nearest Costello twin. “Get in here carefully, Micky. You are going down.”

“That’s ’cause Aloysius always gets the best tub. He ain’t sinking none,” said Michael Costello, scowling at his twin.

“Quick!” commanded Amy, and the disgruntled Costello swarmed over the side of the canoe. “We can take in one more. Who is the nearest drowned?”

“I’m sitting in half a foot of water,” confessed the red-haired Shannon, grinning.

“A little soaking will do you good. I can guess who suggested this crazy venture,” Jessie said. “Come, Henrietta.”

“I need her to trim ship!” cried Charlie Foley.

“What do you want to trim your ship with – red, white and blue?” demanded Amy. “If that trough sinks I know you can swim, Charlie.”

The crowd would have had some difficulty in getting back to shore with the wind blowing as freshly as it did if the girls had not come along and, in relays, helped them all back.

“What Mrs. Shannon will say when she sees her two washtubs floating off like that, I don’t know,” sighed Henrietta, after they were all ashore.

“One of ’em’s sunk, so she can’t see it,” Micky Costello said calmly. “Maybe the other will go down. Don’t you big girls say anything and maybe she won’t find it out.”

Jessie and Amy had headed for Dogtown in the first place without any expectation of playing a life-saving part. Jessie thought they ought to see Mrs. Foley, who was fleshy and easy of disposition, and ask her about Henrietta’s visit. So they accompanied the freckle-faced little girl to the Foley house.

“I ain’t telling ’em all they can come to visit my island, Miss Jessie,” said the little girl. “But of course, the Foleys could come. Mrs. Blair and Bertha wouldn’t mind just them, of course. There’s only Mrs. Foley and Charlie and Billy and the baby and three more boys and – and – well, that’s all, only Mr. Foley. He wouldn’t want to come.”

“You would better be sure of your island, and just how much you own of it, Hen,” advised Amy Drew. “It may not be big enough to hold everybody you want to invite.”

“Why, Miss Amy, it’s a awful big island,” declared little Henrietta. “It’s got a whole golf link on it. I heard Mr. Blair say so.”

The “bulgy” Mrs. Foley welcomed the Roselawn girls with her usual copiousness. Of course, she had the youngest Foley in her lap, and the housework was “at sixes and sevens,” since little Henrietta had been at Stratfordtown for a week.

“How I’m going to git used, young ladies, to havin’ that child away is more than I can say. ’Tis a great mistake I have all boys for childers. There is nothing like a smart girl around the house.”

Jessie, very curious, asked the woman what she knew about Henrietta’s wonderful story of wealth.

“Sure, I’ve always expected it would come to her some day,” declared Mrs. Foley. “Her mother, who was a good neighbor of mine before we moved out here to the lake, said Hen’s father come of rich folks. They used to drive their own carriage. That was before automobiles come in so plenteous.”

“Did Bertha ever say anything about it, Mrs. Foley?”

“Not much. ’Tis Hen will be the rich wan. Oh, yes. And glad I am if the child is about to come into her own. She’s no business to be running down here every chance she gets. I had himself telephone to Bertha when he went to town this morning, and it is likely she will be here after the child. Hen’s as wild as a hawk.”

Bertha Blair, in fact, appeared in a hired car before Jessie and Amy were ready to return in their canoe to Roselawn. She was quite as excited as Henrietta had been about the strange fortune that promised to come into their lives. Bertha could tell the chums from Roselawn many more particulars of the Padriac Haney property.

“If little Henrietta will only be good and not be so wild and learn her lessons and mind what she’s told,” Bertha said seriously, “maybe she will have money and an island – or part of one, anyway. But she does not behave very well. She is as wild as a March hare.”

Little Henrietta looked serious for her; but Mrs. Foley took her part at once.

“Sure don’t be expectin’ too much of the child at wance, Bertha. She’s run as wild as the wind itself here. She’s fought and played with these Dogtown kids since she was able to toddle around. What would ye expect?”

“But she must learn,” declared the older girl. “Mrs. Blair won’t take us to the island this summer if she is not good.”

“Then I’ll go myself,” announced Henrietta. “It’s my island, ain’t it? Who has a better right there?”

Jessie took a hand at this point, shaking her head gravely at the freckled little girl.

“Do you suppose, Henrietta Haney, that your friends – like Mrs. Foley or Mrs. Blair, or even Amy and I – will want to come to your island to see you if you are not a good girl?”

“Say, if I get rich can’t I do like I want to – like other rich folks?”

“You most certainly cannot. Rich people, if they are to be loved, must be even more careful in their conduct than poor folks.”

“We-ell,” confessed the freckled little girl frankly, “I’d rather be rich than be loved. If I can’t be both easy, I’ll be rich.”

“Such amazing worldliness!” sighed Amy, raising her hands in mock horror.

But Jessie Norwood truly wished the little girl to be nice. Poor little Henrietta, however, had much to unlearn. She chattered continually about the island she owned and the riches she was to enjoy. The smaller children of Dogtown followed her – and the green parasol – about as though they were enchanted.

“’Tis a witch she certainly is,” declared Mrs. Foley. “She’s bewitched them all, so she has. But I’m lost widout her, meself. When a woman has six – and them all boys – and a man that drinks – ”

This statement of her personal affairs had been so often heard by the three girls that they all tried to sidetrack Mrs. Foley’s complaint. It was Jessie, however, who advanced a really good reason for getting out of the Foley house.

“I promised Monty Shannon I would look at his radio set,” she said, jumping up. “You will excuse us for a little, Mrs. Foley? You are not going back to Stratfordtown at once, Bertha?”

“Before long. I have only hired the car for the forenoon. The man has another job this afternoon. And I must find that Henrietta again,” for the freckle-faced little girl was as lively, so Amy said, as a water-bug – “one of those skimmery things with long legs that dart along the surface of the water.”

The trio went out and across the cinder-covered yard to the Shannon house. The immediate surroundings of Dogtown were squalid, although its site upon the edge of Lake Mononset might have been made very pleasant indeed.

“If these boys like Monty Shannon and some of the girls stay at home when they grow up they surely will improve the looks of the village,” Jessie had said. “For Monty and his kind are altogether too smart not to want to live as other people do.”

“You’ve said it,” agreed Amy, with enthusiasm. “He is smart. He has a better radio receiver than you have. Wait till you see.”

“How do you know?” asked the surprised Jessie.

“He was telling me about it. You know how often some ‘squeak box,’ or other amateur operator, breaks in on our concerts.”

“We-ell, not so often now,” Jessie said. “I have learned more about tuning and wave-lengths. But, of course, I have only a single circuit crystal receiving set. I have been talking to Dad about getting a better one.”

“Monty will show you,” Amy said with confidence, as they knocked at the Shannon door.

The little cottage was small. Downstairs there were but two rooms. The door gave access to the kitchen, and beyond was the “sitting-room,” of which Monty’s mother was inordinately proud. She was a widow, and helped herself and her children by doing fine laundry work for the wealthy people of New Melford.

From the front room when the girls entered came sounds that they recognized – radio sounds which held their instant attention, although they were merely market reports at that hour in the forenoon.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Bertha Blair said, clasping her hands. “I never can get over the wonder of it.”

“Same here,” Amy declared. “When Jess and I listened to you singing the ‘Will o’ the Wisp’ last night it seemed almost shivery that we should recognize the very tones of your voice out of the air.”

“Huh!” exclaimed Montmorency, grinning. “I got so I know the announcers, too. When that Mr. Blair speaks I know him. Of course, I know Mr. Mark Stratford’s voice, for I’ve talked with him. I wouldn’t have such a fine machine here, only he advised me.”

“Tell me,” Jessie said, “what is the difference between my receiving set and yours, Monty?”

“If you want to hear clearly and keep outside radio out of your machine, use a regenerative radio set with an audion detector. The whole business, Miss Jessie, is in the detector, after all. A regenerative set of this kind is selective enough – that’s the expression Mr. Mark used – to enable any one to tune out all but a few commercial stations. And they don’t often butt in to annoy you. For sure, you’ll kill all the amateur squeak-boxes and other transmission stations of that class.

“Now, I’m going to tune in for Stratfordtown. They are sending the Government weather reports and mother wants to know should she water her tomatoes or depend on a thunderstorm,” and he grinned at Mrs. Shannon, who stood, an awkward but smiling figure, in the doorway between the two rooms.

“’Tis too wonderful a thing for me to understand, at all, at all,” admitted the widow. “However can they tell you out of that machine there is a thunderstorm coming?”

“Listen!” exclaimed the boy eagerly. There was a horn on the set and no need for earphones. He had tuned the market reports out. From the horn came a different voice. But the words the visitors heard had nothing to do with the report on the weather. “What’s the matter?” demanded Monty Shannon. “Listen to this, will you?”

“… she will come home at once. This is serious – a serious call for Bertha Blair.”

“Do you hear that?” almost shrieked Amy Drew. “Why, it must mean you, Bertha!”