DARRY’S BIG IDEA
When Mrs. Foley and the baby arrived home there stood upon the
platform at the back door of the house a most amazing figure. She
knew every child in Dogtown, and none of them had ever made such an
appearance. She almost dropped the baby through amazement.
“For love of John Thomas McGuire!” burst forth the “bulgy” woman,
finally finding her voice. “What’s happened to that child? Is it an
angel she’s turned into? Or is she an heiress, I dunno? Hen Haney!
what’s the meaning of this parade? And have you washed the dishes
like I told you?”
“You must forgive her, Mrs. Foley,” Jessie said, coming down to meet
the woman and taking the baby from her. “Go and see and speak to the
child,” she whispered. “She is so delighted that she has not been
able to talk for ten minutes.”
“Then,” said Mrs. Foley solemnly, “the wor-r-rld has come to an end.
When Hen Haney can’t talk——”
But she mounted heavily to the platform. Little Henrietta stood
there like a wax figure. She dared not move for fear something would
happen to her finery.
Every individual freckle on her thin, sharp face seemed to shine as
though there was some radiance behind it. Absurd as that taffeta
dress was for a child of her age, it seemed to her an armor against
all disaster. Nothing bad (she had already acclaimed it to Amy and
Jessie) could happen to her with that frock on. And those silk
stockings! And the patent-toed shoes! And a hat that almost hid the
child’s features from view!
“Well, well, well!” muttered the amazed Mrs. Foley. “If anybody
had ever told me that you’d have been dressed up like—like a
millionaire’s kid! When I took you away from your poor dead mother
and brought you out here, Hen Haney, to be a playfellow of me little
Charlie, and Billy, and—and—Well, anyway, to be a playmate to them.
Ha! You never cleaned out the stove-grate, did you?”
She had looked into the kitchen and saw the dishes in the sink and
the gaping stove hearth, and shook her head. Jessie thought it time
to intercede for the little girl.
“You must forgive her, Mrs. Foley, and blame me. I made her dress up
in the things we brought. I was sure you would want to see her in her
Sunday clothes.”
A deep sigh welled up from Henrietta’s chest. “Am I going to sure
enough keep ’em to wear Sundays?” she asked.
“If Mrs. Foley will let you,” said the politic Jessie. “You can keep
them very carefully. It is really wonderful how well they fit.”
“Sure,” sighed Mrs. Foley, “she’s better dressed than me own
children.”
“But you told us your children were all boys,” Amy put in quickly.
“Aw, but a time like this I wish’t I had a daughter,” declared the
woman, gazing at Henrietta almost tenderly. “What a sweet little
colleen she might be if she had some flesh on her bones and something
besides freckles to color her face. Yes, yes!”
“I am awfully glad, Mrs. Foley,” said Jessie quickly, “to see how
much you approve of what we have tried to do for Henrietta. So I am
bold enough to ask you to let us take her up to my house for over
night. Momsy wants to see her in these new clothes, and——”
“Well, if Mrs. Momsy—Or is it Mr. Momsy, I dunno?”
“Why, Momsy is my mother!”
“The like o’ that now! And she lets you call her out o’ name? Well,
there is no understanding you rich folks. Ha! So you want to take
little Hen away from me?”
“Only for over night. It would be a little vacation for her, you
know.”
Mrs. Foley looked back into the kitchen and shook her head. “By the
looks o’ things,” she said, “she’s been having a vacation right here.
Well, she’ll be no good for a while anyway, I can see that. Why, she
can’t much more than speak with them glad rags on her.”
“Come on,” said Henrietta, and walked down the steps, heading toward
the lake.
Amy burst into laughter again, and even Mrs. Foley began to grin.
“She’s as ready to go as though you two young ladies was her fairy
god-mothers. Sure, and maybe ’tis me own fault. I’ve been telling
her for years about the Good Little People that me grandmother knew
in Ireland—or said she knew, God rest her soul!—and she has always
been looking for banshees and ha’nts and fairies to appear and whisk
her away. She is a princess in disguise that’s been char-r-rmed by a
wicked witch. All them stories and beliefs has kept her contented.
She’s a good little thing,” Mrs. Foley ended, wiping her eyes. “Go
along with her and tell your Mrs. Momsy to be good to her.”
So they got away from Dogtown with flying colors. Henrietta sat, a
little silk-clad figure, in the bottom of the canoe and shivered
whenever she thought a drop of water might come inboard.
“She ought to have worn her old clothes in the canoe,” Amy suggested,
but with dancing eyes.
“O-o-oh!” gasped Henrietta, pleadingly.
“It is going to take dentist’s forceps to ever get the child out of
that dress,” chuckled Jessie. “I can see that.”
They got back to Roselawn in good season for dinner. Chapman had
returned from town, but had not brought Mr. Norwood home. Jessie’s
father, it seemed, had left the courtroom early in the afternoon and
had gone out of town on some matter connected with the Ellison case.
That case, as Jessie and her mother feared, was already in the court.
A jury had been decided upon, as the defendants, Mrs. Poole and Mrs.
Bothwell, had been advised by McCracken, their lawyer, to demand a
jury trial.
The plaintiffs would have to get in their witnesses the next day.
If Bertha Blair was ever to aid the side of right and truth in this
matter, she must be found and brought to court.
“And we don’t know how to find her. If she is hidden away over there
at that Gandy farm, how shall we ever find it out for sure?” wailed
Jessie. “I hoped Daddy would get my letter and come and take charge
of the search himself.”
“Your idea of taking Henrietta over there and letting her call Bertha
is a good one,” declared Amy stubbornly. “Aren’t you going to do it?”
“Yes. We’ll drive over early. But it is only a chance.”
They could not interest Henrietta in her Cousin Bertha that evening,
save that she said she hoped Bertha would come and see her before
she had to take off the silk dress and the other articles of her gay
apparel.
She scarcely had appetite for dinner, although Momsy and Jessie tried
their very best to interest Henrietta in several dishes that were
supposed to appeal to a child’s palate. Henrietta was polite and
thanked them, but was not enthusiastic.
She found a tall mirror in the drawing-room and every time they
missed her, Jessie tiptoed into that long apartment to see Henrietta
posing before the glass. The child certainly did enjoy her finery.
The suggestion of bedtime only annoyed Henrietta. But finally Jessie
took her upstairs and showed her the twin beds in her own room, one
of which the visitor was to occupy, and so gradually Henrietta came
to the idea that some time she would have to remove the new clothes.
They listened in on the radio that evening until late, using the
amplifier and horn that Mr. Norwood had bought. Henrietta could not
understand how the voices could come into the room over the outside
wires.
“I’ll tell Charlie Foley and Montmorency Shannon about this,” she
confided to Jessie and Amy. “I guess you don’t know them. But they
are smart. They can rig one of these wireless things with wires, I
bet. And then the whole of Dogtown will listen in.”
“Or, say! Maybe they won’t let poor folks like those in Dogtown have
radios? Will they?”
“This is for the rich and poor alike,” Jessie assured her.
“Provided,” added Amy, “that the poor are not too poor.”
They finally got Henrietta to bed. She went to sleep with the silk
dress hanging over a chair within reach. After Amy had gone home
Jessie retired with much more worriment upon her mind than little
Henrietta had upon hers.
Everybody was astir early about the Norwood and Drew places in
Roselawn that next morning. At the former house Jessie and Henrietta
aroused everybody. At the Drew place “two old salts,” as Amy sleepily
called them from her bedroom window, came rambling in from a taxicab
and disturbed the repose of the family.
“Where did you leave that _Marigold_?” the sister demanded from her
window. “You boys go off on that yacht, supposedly to stay a year,
and get back in forty-eight hours. You turn up like a couple of bad
pennies. You——”
“Chop it, Sis,” Darry advised. “See if you can get a bite fixed for
a couple of started castaways. The engine went dead on us and we
sailed into Barnegat last night and all hands came home by train.
Mark has the laugh on us.”
Fortunately the cook was already downstairs and Amy put on a negligee
and ran down to sit with the boys in the breakfast room and listen to
the tale of their adventures.
“Oh! But,” she said, after a while, “there’s been something doing
in this neighborhood, too. At least, our neighbors have been doing
something. Do you know, Darry, Jess is bound to find that lost girl
we were telling you about? Mr. Norwood goes into court to-day on that
Ellison case, and he admits himself that he has very little chance of
winning without the testimony of Bertha Blair.”
“Fine name,” drawled Darry. “Sounds like a movie actress.”
“Let me tell you,” Amy said eagerly.
She related how she and Jessie had tried to find Bertha after hearing
what they believed to be the lost girl’s voice out of the air. Darry
and Burd listened with increasing wonder.
“What won’t you kids do next?” gasped Darry.
“I wish you wouldn’t call us kids. You are as bad as Belle Ringold,”
complained his sister.
“Is she hanging around here yet?” demanded Darry. “I don’t want to
see that girl. I know I’m going to say something unpleasant to her
yet.”
“She is right after you, just the same,” Amy said, suddenly giggling.
She told about the coming moonlight box-party down the lake.
“We’ll go right back to the _Marigold_, Burd,” said Darry promptly.
“Home is no place for us. But tell us what else you did, Sis.”
When Amy had finished her tale her brother was quite serious.
Particularly was he anxious to help Jessie, for he thought a good
deal of his sister’s chum.
“Tell you what,” he said, looking at Burd, “we’ll hang around long
enough to ride over to the stock farm with the girls, sha’n’t we?”
“What do you think you can do more than they have done?” asked Burd,
with some scorn.
“I have an idea,” said Darry Drew slowly. “I think it is a good one.
It even beats using that little Hen Haney for a bait. Listen here.”
And he proceeded to tell them.