CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?
“What is this?” Mr. Norwood asked, staring at his eager daughter.
“Have I heard anything before about a girl being carried away?”
“Why, don’t you remember, Daddy, about Henrietta who lives over in
Dogtown, and her cousin, Bertha, and how Bertha has disappeared,
and—and——”
“And Henrietta is the champion snake killer of all this region?”
chuckled Mr. Norwood. “I certainly have a vivid remembrance of the
snakes, at any rate.”
“Dear me!” cried Momsy. “This is all new to me. Where are the snakes,
Jessie?”
“Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go,” rejoined
her husband. “Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that
you wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I
remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before
you were through that you quite forgot the snakes—I mean forgot the
girl you say was run away with.”
“Don’t joke her any more, Robert,” advised Momsy. “I can see she is
in earnest.”
“You just listen here, Daddy Norwood,” Jessie cried. “Perhaps you’ll
be glad to hear about Bertha. She is little Henrietta Haney’s cousin,
and Henrietta expected Bertha to come to see her where she lives with
the Foleys in Dogtown.
“Well, the day that Bertha was expected, she didn’t come. That was
the day Amy and I first thought of building our radio. And when we
were walking into town we heard a girl screaming in Dogtown Lane. So
we ran in, and there was this girl being pulled into an automobile by
two women.”
“What girl was this?” asked Mr. Norwood, quite in earnest now. “A
girl you and Amy knew?”
“We had never seen her before, Daddy. And I am not positive, of
course, that she was Bertha, Henrietta’s cousin. But Amy and I
thought it might be. And now you tell about two women who want to
keep a servant girl away from you, and it might be the same.”
“It might indeed,” admitted Mr. Norwood thoughtfully. “Tell me what
the two women looked like. Describe them as well as you can.”
Jessie did so. She managed, even after this length of time, to
remember many peculiarities about the woman who drove the big car
and the fleshy one who had treated the girl so roughly. Mr. Norwood
exclaimed at last:
“I should not be at all surprised if that were Martha Poole and Mrs.
Bothwell. The descriptions in a general way fit them. And if it is
so, the girl Jessie and Amy saw abused in that way is surely the maid
who worked for Mrs. Poole.”
“Oh, Robert! can it be possible, do you think?” cried his wife.
“Not alone possible, but probable,” declared Robert Norwood. “Jessie,
I am glad that you are so observant. I want you to get the little
girl from Dogtown some day soon and let me talk with her. Perhaps she
can tell me something about her cousin’s looks that will clinch the
matter. At least, she can tell us her cousin’s full name, I have no
doubt.”
“It’s Bertha for a first name,” said Jessie, eagerly. “And I supposed
it was Haney, like Henrietta’s.”
“The girl I am looking for is not named Haney, whatever her first
name may be. Anyway, it is a chance, and I mean to get to the bottom
of this mysterious kidnaping if I can, Jessie. Let me see this little
Henrietta who kills snakes with such admirable vigor,” and he laughed.
It was, however, no inconsiderable matter, as Jessie well understood.
In the morning she hurried over to the Drew house to tell Amy about
it. Both had been interested from the very beginning in the mystery
of the strange girl and her two women captors. There was something
wrong with those women. Amy said this with a serious shake of her
head. You could tell!
And when, on further discussion, Jessie remembered their names—Poole
and Bothwell—this fact brought out another discovery.
“Bothwell! I never did!” ejaculated Amy Drew. “Why, no wonder I
thought she looked like somebody I knew. And she drives a fast
car—I’ll say she does. Jess Norwood! where were our wits? Don’t you
remember reading about Sadie Bothwell, whose husband was one of the
first automobile builders, and she has driven in professional races,
and won a prize—a cup, or something? And her picture was in the
paper.”
“That is the person Daddy refers to,” Jessie agreed. “I did not like
her at all.”
“Ho! I should say not!” scoffed Amy. “And I wasn’t in love with
the fat woman. So she is a race track follower, is she?” Then Amy
giggled. “I guess she wouldn’t follow ’em far afoot! She isn’t so
lively in moving about.”
“But where do you suppose they took Bertha—if it was Henrietta’s
cousin we saw carried off?”
“Now, dear child, I am neither a seventh daughter of a seventh
daughter nor——”
“Nor one of the Seven Sleepers,” laughed Jessie. “So you cannot
prophesy, can you? We will go down to Dogtown this afternoon and see
if Mrs. Foley will let us bring Henrietta back to see Daddy.”
“The child hasn’t been up to see you at all, has she?” asked Amy.
“Why, no.”
“Maybe the woman won’t want her to come. Afraid somebody may take
little Hen away from her. Did you see the child’s hands? They have
been well used to hard work. I have an idea she is a regular little
slave.”
“Oh, I hope not. It doesn’t seem to me as though anybody could treat
that child cruelly. And she doesn’t seem to blame Mrs. Foley for her
condition.”
“Well, Hen knows how to kill snakes, but maybe she is a poor judge
of character,” laughed Amy. “I’ll go with you and defend you if the
Foley tribe attack in force. But let’s go down in the canoe. Then we
can steal the cheeld, if necessary. ‘Once aboard the lugger!’ you
know, ‘and the gal is mine’.”
“To hear you, one would think you were a real pirate,” scoffed Jessie.
At lunch time Nell Stanley had an errand in the neighborhood, and
she dropped in at the Drew house. The three girls, Mrs. Drew being
away, had a gay little meal together, waited on by the Drew butler,
McTavish, who was a very grave and solemn man.
“Almost ecclesiastic, I’ll say,” chuckled Nell, when the old serving
man was out of the room. “He is a lot more ministerial looking than
the Reverend. I expect him, almost any time, to say grace before
meat. Fred convulsed us all at the table last evening. We take turns,
you know, giving thanks. And at dinner last evening it was the
Reverend’s turn.
“‘Say, Papa,’ Fred asked afterward—he’s such a solemn little tike you
have no idea what’s coming—‘Say, Papa, why is it you say a so much
longer prayer than I do?’
“‘Because you’re not old enough to say a long one,’ Reverend told him.
“‘Oh!’ said Master Freddie, ‘I thought maybe it was ’cause I wasn’t
big enough to be as wicked as you and I didn’t need so long a one.’
Now! What can you do with a young one like that?” she added, as the
girls went off into a gale of laughter.
But she had other news of her young brothers besides this. Bob and
Fred were enamored of the radio. They were ingenious lads. Nell
said she believed they could rig a radio set with a hair-pin and a
mouse-trap. But she was going to help them obtain a fairly good set;
only, because of the shortage of funds at the parsonage, Bob and
Fred would be obliged themselves to make every part that was possible.
So she drew from Jessie and from Amy all they knew about the new
science, and Jessie ran across to her house and got the books she had
bought dealing with radio and the installation of a set.
Jessie and Amy got into their outing clothes when Nell Stanley had
gone and embarked upon the lake, paddling to the landing at despised
Dogtown. It was not a savory place in appearance, even from the
water-side. As the canoe drew near the girls saw a wild mob of
children, both boys and girts, racing toward the broken landing.
“Why! What are they ever doing?” asked Jessie, in amazement, backing
with her paddle.
“Chasing that young one ahead,” said Amy.
They were all dressed most fantastically, and the child running in
advance, an agile and bedrabbled looking little creature, was more in
masquerade than the others. She wore an old poke bonnet and carried a
crooked stick, and there seemed to be a hump upon her back.
“Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake! Miss Spotted Snake!” the girls from
Roselawn heard the children shrieking, and without doubt this
opprobrious epithet referred to the one pursued.