BILLY’S BIRTHDAY
Darry and Burd had towed in the _Water Thrush_ while the girls had
gone to Stratfordtown with Mrs. Norwood; but they were so busy
caulking the seams and repainting the launch that Jessie and Amy
could not look to the young collegians for any companionship that
afternoon.
“And we musn’t annoy them—the way Belle and Sally Moon do,” said
Jessie.
“I like that! My own brother,” sniffed Amy. “He needn’t think he’s so
big just because he goes to Yale.”
“We don’t want to get snubbed, do we?” laughed her chum. “Come on,
honey. I’ve an errand down at Brill’s. He’s got a new kind of a
test-buzzer, and I want to try it, and buy one if it is better than
our old one. You know, Brill has got a set in working order and you
can listen in down there just as though you were at home here.”
“Goody!” proclaimed Amy. “I was just feeling like a George Washington
sundae.”
“Dear me! How much you think of the inner man, Amy,” sighed Jessie.
“Don’t talk so wildly,” admonished her chum. “It is the inner girl I
am thinking of, I assure you. Wait till I run and get my purse,” she
added. “I don’t want to lead you into the Dainties Shop again without
being well supplied with cash.”
They went to the radio place first, and after seeing the buzzer tried
out, Jessie bought one. She was always on the lookout for improved
parts for her set. Daddy Norwood laughingly said that it cost as much
to keep Jessie’s radio up to date as it did to support their two
automobiles.
That, however, was “stretching the point” a good deal. Nor need one
have as expensive a set as Jessie Norwood had, or as many expensive
parts, if the enthusiast is limited in capital.
“If Monty Shannon can get a whole big set for fifteen dollars,” Amy
observed as they left the Brill store, “almost anybody might become a
radioite.”
Jessie sighed. “I am worried about that,” she confessed. “When we go
over to Dogtown to-night we must try to get that boy to tell us how
he got money for his set.”
“I’ve asked him already,” Amy said. “But he is foxy. There is
something mysterious about it, that is sure.”
The girls went along to the Dainties Shop of which Amy, at least,
was a very good patron. She hurried ahead and, had she not been so
quick in running down the steps into the place, Jessie would have
held back.
“Oh, Amy!” the latter murmured. “There’s Belle and Sally.”
But Amy had pushed open the screen door. “Come on!” she whispered
fiercely, looking back at her chum. “I won’t back out now.”
So Jessie followed her down the steps and into the pretty shop.
Several of the tables were occupied. Right near the door were the
girls Jessie had spied—Belle and Sally.
“Hullo, children!” said Amy, cheerfully. “What are you eating that’s
good?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Belle said sharply. “We have given our order
already.”
“Dear me, Belle,” the incorrigible Amy said calmly, “you don’t
suppose that I expected generosity from you? Never!”
“You’ll get something from me you don’t expect,” muttered Belle. “You
and Jess Norwood think you are wonderful, don’t you? Those silly
little things you did over there at the rehearsal will never make a
hit on the program. Don’t think it.”
“My mother,” said Sally Moon, “said she could hardly hear Jess
singing; and that piece you recited, Amy, is as old as the hills.”
Jessie said nothing, but her chum was not to be so easily browbeaten.
She tossed her head and laughed.
“That’s all right, Sally. If Jess and I did no better than your
chorus we would have been put off the program right then and there.
You girls have got another chance; but you’d better be careful.”
“Is that so?” cried Belle in her ugliest manner. “I suppose you know
so much about it because you are friendly with Mark Stratford. He
fell in your yard, and so you know him,” and she laughed. “And I
understand it cost him his gold watch and chain to fall there.”
“Why, Belle!” gasped Jessie. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Who is going to stop me, I’d like to know?” returned the girl of the
unhappy temper. “You are not my boss.”
“And I guess Miss Allister has made up her mind she isn’t your boss,”
interposed Amy, who could not be as patient as her chum. “The poor
woman!”
“I wish you’d mind your own affairs,” Belle said, her face blazing.
“If that chorus is cut out of the radio program we’ll know whom to
thank. And if it _is_ cut out—well, you Roselawn girls will find out
something, I guess.”
“That is what we are here for,” admitted Amy. “To learn.”
She went along to an empty table and Jessie followed her. The latter
was much more seriously troubled by the encounter than Amy.
“What do you suppose Belle and Sally mean to do? They may entirely
wreck that chorus,” Jessie said.
“Let ’em,” said her chum. “If the chorus is cut out of the program
we’ll have a better chance. And Nell, too.”
“But it seems too bad about the other girls. They are not all like
Belle and her friends.”
“Those Ringolds are always up to something tricky,” said Amy. “I
shouldn’t wonder at all if Belle had got her mother to scheme some
way of making trouble for your mother and the other members of the
hospital committee, Jess.”
“Oh! That would be too mean! And when it is for so good a cause!”
Jessie said. “I know Momsy is very much worried about the concert.”
“You see,” prophesied Amy. “And then, think of their getting hold of
the story of Mark’s lost watch. We’ll hear more about that before the
thing is over.”
“I mean, if I can,” Jessie repeated firmly, “to find out something
regarding that watch to-night.”
Of course Darry and Burd Alling had not been invited to Billy
Foley’s birthday party, but they drove the girls down to Dogtown
right after dinner and promised to return for them later.
Henrietta and the Foley boys, with all their friends, were gathered
on the platform before the door of the Foley cottage, and most of the
grown folk of the neighborhood were likewise near by, the men smoking
their pipes and the women with their arms rolled in their aprons, and
gossiping mildly of neighborhood affairs.
“’Tis proud I am to have ye here on me Billy’s birthday, Miss Jessie
and Miss Amy,” declared Mrs. Foley. She rocked in a grand spring
rocker, brought out of a neighbor’s parlor, and one might think that
it was her birthday that was being celebrated.
Mrs. Foley was a “bulgy” person who almost always had a baby on her
lap when she sat down. But on this occasion Henrietta had relieved
her of the youngest Foley and had popped him, fast asleep, into a box
cradle in the house.
Billy, whose nativity was being celebrated under a fringe of Japanese
lanterns on the platform, was cavorting about in an Indian suit,
attempting to scalp all his little friends with a wooden tomahawk.
Jessie and Amy brought him presents, too; and they had been wise
enough to give him “perfectly useless” playthings—the kind that
delight a small boy. Henrietta brought him by the hand to thank the
two Roselawn girls.
“I guess they don’t want to kiss you, Billy,” said the freckle-faced
girl in her very practical way. “Your face is too dirty. Seems to
me it always is dirty. I don’t know how it is, but dirt just sticks
to these Foleys. Even Charlie, big as he is, can’t remember to wash
behind his ears.”
The visitors had brought hard candies for all the younger children,
too. Most of the children played games on the plain before the group
of houses. After being introduced to such of the grown folk as they
had not previously met, Jessie and Amy joined the boys and girls in
some rather boisterous games, for those were the only kind that the
Dogtown children knew.
“You’re a sight better than them other rich girls that come here from
town,” Henrietta confessed to Jessie. “You and Miss Amy ain’t so
stuck up.”
“What other girls come here?” the Roselawn girl asked, with curiosity.
“Some like that Moon one, and another named Belle. They dress awful
fancy.”
“I know those girls. Why, you saw them over at the picnic the other
night.”
“Them’s the ones,” admitted Henrietta, pursing her lips. “They come
here sometimes in a car to bring Mrs. Shannon fine laundry. But they
never play with us Dogtown kids.”
“No?”
“Did you know, Miss Jessie, that they are going to have another big
time over at the old Carter place?”
“Another moonlight party?”
“Not like that one. It’s big folks’ doings, I guess,” said the little
freckled girl. “That Belle’s mother and Mrs. Moon that sends Mrs.
Shannon laundry, is going to boss it.”
“I didn’t hear about it,” said Jessie, beginning to grow suspicious.
“When is it to be?”
“Them girls was over here this afternoon and brought clo’es to Mrs.
Shannon. They got to be done against the day the concert is going to
be held at Carter’s. It’s sort of a lawn party, I guess; and them
girls said they’d have a radio concert like you had over at your
house once. You ’member, Miss Jessie?”
“I most certainly do!” exclaimed Jessie. “A radio concert? And when
is it to be? Did you hear, Henrietta?”
“Oh, yes. It’s to be next Wednesday.”
“And on Thursday the hospital committee are going to broadcast their
entertainment for the benefit of the hospital!” gasped Jessie. “How
mean! The very day before!”