THE HOSPITAL DRIVE
“Really, girls, unless you were moles, you could scarcely have
searched more faithfully for Mark’s watch,” Mrs. Norwood said, coming
out to preside over the activities of Jessie and Amy.
“What _do_ you suppose has become of the thing?” sighed her daughter.
“I’ve dug my fingernails full of dirt. Manicuring will never repair
the ravages of it,” Amy said ruefully, looking at her hands.
The rubbish left from the wrecked plane had all been removed. The
workmen from Stratfordtown had seen nothing of Mark’s lovely watch.
Although it was rather an old-fashioned piece of jewelry for a young
man to wear, the girls knew that it was very valuable. But it was
the associations connected with the gift that made it particularly
valuable in the consideration of the senator’s injured son.
“It is too bad,” sighed Jessie again. “Mark was almost killed by his
tumble, and now he must give up his watch.”
“Say!” drawled Amy. “Did you ever think that he has lost his nice
shiny aeroplane, too? That is scarcely worth carting back to
Stratfordtown. I heard one of the men say so.”
“Have you looked everywhere for the watch, girls?” Mrs. Norwood
asked. “I dread telephoning over to tell him that we cannot find it.”
“Maybe we would better look again,” Jessie observed doubtfully.
“But you have already dug over the whole garden. My poor Marshal
Niels!” murmured her mother.
“It is no use,” declared Amy, with briskness. “Somebody came along
and picked it up.”
“Oh! Don’t say that!” cried Jessie.
“It might be so,” her mother observed. “There have been people around
to view the wreck. Those children, for instance, last evening.”
“That’s just what I said; but Jess won’t hear to it,” Amy cried. “We
don’t know how honest those Dogtown kids are.”
“Little Henrietta is no thief,” Jessie declared earnestly.
“I don’t believe she is, either,” her mother said, smiling. “That
funny little thing could not possibly be mean, if she is untamed. But
those children with her—especially those boys. A watch such as this
that has been lost would be a great temptation.”
“But, Momsy! They would not even know the value of it.”
“Leave it to Henrietta, or to Montmorency Shannon,” said Amy quickly.
“That Shannon boy doesn’t have to be led about by a little dog,” and
Amy laughed again.
“Of course he is smart enough,” agreed Jessie. “But being smart and
poor does not prove his dishonesty,” she added severely.
“That is true, Jessie,” her mother said approvingly. “Poverty does
not walk hand-in-hand with dishonesty by any manner of means. And
the poor need our help in any event. That is what we are trying to
establish the new hospital for. That fund is worrying me,” and the
good woman sighed.
“It’s a far cry from Mark’s watch and Montmorency Shannon to the New
Melford’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital,” laughed Amy, immediately
recovering her spirits.
“And a still farther cry to our new aerial,” Jessie said. “Come, Amy,
there is no use grubbing here any more. We might as well get to work
erecting the wires again. I know where there is part of a roll of
number fourteen wire in the garage. We’ll need some of that.”
“Radio?” said Mrs. Norwood, hesitatingly. “I wonder, Jessie, if that
isn’t the way to help us out?”
“What do you mean, Momsy?” her daughter asked.
“The hospital fund need is on my mind. If we could give some new
entertainment by which to raise money—and what is newer than radio?”
“Radio telephony is not exactly new,” Jessie said reflectively. “You
know that, Momsy. But I suppose we could give a radio entertainment
again. It would not be exactly new——”
“Oh! Oh!” cried Amy Drew suddenly, and she pirouetted about on the
torn sward and clapped her hands.
“My dear Amy,” laughed Jessie, “has something bitten you?”
“Exactly,” agreed the excited Amy. “And it is an awful bite—believe
me!”
“That sounds very much like slang to me, Amy,” laughed Jessie’s
mother. “What do you mean? What is it that has bitten you?”
“An idea,” replied Amy energetically. “And the finest ever! Listen,
folkses!”
“Do tell us, dear,” said her chum warmly.
“At the bazaar, you know,” Amy said earnestly, “Jess just connected
up with whatever chanced to be coming through the ether. It was
bits of program from all over. But why not have a regular program—a
big one—broadcasted from one station for the special purpose of
attracting attention to your drive for the hospital fund, Mrs.
Norwood?”
“I don’t just see, Amy——”
“I do! I do!” cried Jessie delightedly. “Oh, Momsy, don’t you see?
Get big singers like Madame Elva, and other musicians, and all those
interested in your hospital. Then find some sending station where
they will let you give the concert——”
“The Stratford Electric Company,” interrupted Amy.
“Good! Fine!” crowed Jessie.
“Can such a thing be done?” asked the wondering Mrs. Norwood, who had
a rather confused idea of the uses of radio telephony.
“Of course it can be done, Momsy. It is a wonderful idea. Think!
Thousands and thousands of people will be listening in.”
“But won’t the concert have to be given in a hall—like your
entertainment in the tent?”
“Nothing like that, Momsy,” declared her energetic daughter.
“Understand that if you get your entertainers together at a certain
hour at the sending station—say eight o’clock in the evening—and
arrange to have them sing and play and recite just as though the
audience were before them, you will be able to get many, many people
to listen in who understand that, although they are getting a free
concert, it is one to advertise the need of the New Melford Women’s
and Children’s Hospital.”
“Oh! How ingenious you two girls are,” said Mrs. Norwood with more
than slight approval. “But do you suppose the people who have radio
sets will understand?”
“They will if there is not too much atmospherics,” Amy said, grinning.
“Stop joking, Amy. Don’t spoil it all,” cried Jessie. “You have
started a perfectly fine idea. And we must help Momsy carry it out.”
“Oh, my dears,” Mrs. Norwood hastened to say, “you must understand
that I cannot decide this thing myself. I am only one of the
committee. But it does seem as though Amy’s thought were really
inspired.”
“That’s all the thoughts I have—the inspired kind,” declared Amy
gravely. “And they are at your service, Mrs. Norwood.”
That was the start of it. Mrs. Norwood began calling up the other
ladies of the hospital fund committee and explaining Amy’s idea to
them. She really forgot, for the time, that she was supposed to
report to Stratfordtown that Mark’s beautiful watch was not to be
found anywhere about the Norwood premises.
“And do you suppose,” said Jessie to her chum, in a worried tone, as
they set to work to string again the radio antenna, “that somebody
picked up that watch Mark lost? I hate to think any one about here
would steal it.”
“What do you mean—steal it?” asked Amy briskly. “If it was merely
picked up—why, I would do that myself. I certainly would not leave a
diamond-studded watch lying on the ground. Not much!”
“But you would not pick it up and walk off without saying anything
about it,” objected Jessie. “No, you wouldn’t. And nobody else who
really was honest.”
“Well, those kids from Dogtown don’t know as much about honesty as we
do, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to believe such a thing about them, especially about
little Henrietta.”
“She’s awfully cute, I admit,” said Amy. “But after all, we do not
know just how good she is.”
Jessie sighed. The very reason why she would not admit the
possibility of Henrietta’s knowing anything about the lost watch was
based on this point that Amy had brought up. They did not know much
about Henrietta Haney’s moral character, and nothing at all of the
characters of the children she associated with at Dogtown.
“It seems reasonable that the lost watch would be a great temptation
to any of those kids who were poking about the wrecked aeroplane last
night,” said Amy, after a pause in the conversation, during which
the girls were busy with the antenna.
“A whole lot of things that are reasonable aren’t true,” responded
Jessie, a little sharply for her.
“Yes, and a whole lot that are unreasonable are true, I suppose,”
agreed her chum.
“Anyway, I don’t believe, and I don’t intend to believe unless I have
to, that little Henrietta or any of her friends had anything to do
with the disappearance of that watch. So there!” And Jessie went on
with her work rather grimly.