HENRIETTA
“Speaking of radio,” Jessie said suddenly, the matter of the five-dollar
bill coming to her mind, “have you heard anything about the circulation
of counterfeit money, Darry?”
The latter shook his head and looked surprised. Jessie told him of the
special radio announcement that had come to them the night before and of
their subsequent finding that the five-dollar bill in Amy’s possession
was a counterfeit.
Darry listened with interest, but his chief concern seemed to be for Amy
and the loss of her five dollars.
“Hard luck,” he laughed. “Now she will have to do without George
Washington sundaes for the next six months to make up.”
“But the poor girl who gave her that five-dollar bill——”
“Poor girl!” exploded Darry, sitting up straight in his seat to stare at
Jessie in astonishment. “I am used to your kind heart, Jess, but this is
more than I could expect, even of you. Why pity a girl who passes a
counterfeit bill? She probably is one of a gang of counterfeiters.”
“Oh, I should hate to believe that,” said Jessie, quickly. “Somehow, she
didn’t look exactly dishonest.”
“Yet she gave you—or Amy, rather—a counterfeit bill in exchange for five
good ones,” Darry argued. “That doesn’t seem exactly honest, you know.”
“Just the same, I don’t intend to believe any one guilty until the guilt
is proved,” said Jessie, stoutly, and Darry, from the superior heights
of his age, bent upon her a tolerant smile. Despite his slightly
patronizing manner, Darry really regarded this chum of Amy’s as one of
the squarest, most companionable girls he knew. For her age, he
conceded, magnanimously, she sure was a wonder!
“All right,” he said. “Believe anything you like. And now, to change the
subject to something more pleasant, Miss Alling told Burd that you girls
would set the time to go; so, just when will you and Amy be ready for
the trip to Forest Lodge?”
That, indeed, was the all-important question to the Radio Girls in the
days that followed. Although they had numerous costumes for all
occasions, they suddenly discovered that their wardrobes contained
nothing that was really suitable for a vacation in a real,
honest-to-goodness forest. This sad state of affairs, they decided
unanimously, must be remedied immediately.
“Because one cannot possibly have a good time,” Amy had argued,
flippantly, “until one has the proper kind of clothes.”
“It will be a dreadful bore to have to go shopping just now,” said
Jessie, who was impatient of anything that would delay the wonderful
trip. “But if we must, we must.”
“You always have such a clear way of putting things, honey,” said Amy,
irrepressibly. “And, oh, I saw the darlingest sports suits and things in
Letterblair’s window.”
Letterblair’s was a fashionable shop in the downtown district of New
Melford where the girls and their mothers did most of their shopping. It
was from this shop that Jessie had won a beautiful sports coat, offered
as a prize to the girl in New Melford who could think up the cleverest
and most unique idea for a charitable bazaar that was to be held on the
lawn of the Norwood estate. Jessie’s idea—the prize one—had been the
devoting of one “concession” on the bazaar grounds to radio. The radio
tent had been a tremendous success and, oh, how Jessie had enjoyed
wearing that sports coat!
So now it was to Letterblair’s that they went in search of suitable
apparel for this newest outing.
On the way to town they determined to stop and see Nell Stanley.
Although they intended to urge her to accompany them on their trip to
Forest Lodge, they had very little hope that she would be able to go.
Nell was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Doctor Stanley, a minister
much beloved in New Melford. “The Reverend,” as Nell affectionately
called him, was a widower with four children, three younger than Nell.
Although the income of the Stanley family was small, Nell managed
wonderfully. Strong, healthy and capable, the young girl presided
cheerfully over the parsonage and cared for her two younger brothers and
her little sister, to whom she was elder sister and mother as well.
Because of her many responsibilities, it was only upon rare occasions
that Nell could share in the fun of the other two girls. But, in spite
of all this and hard as her life might seem to some, no one had ever
heard Nell Stanley complain.
Nell herself greeted them as they came up to the parsonage. She was
wearing a clean gingham dress and a dust cap and her handsome face was
shining with health and hard work.
“Hello!” she cried gayly. “You two look like conspirators. Come in if
you can find room,” she invited, leading the way into the cluttered
front room of the parsonage. “Sally and the two boys muss things up more
quickly than I can straighten them out, I think.”
Nell listened sympathetically while the two girls told her of the trip
to Forest Lodge, but shook her head regretfully when they said Miss
Alling wanted her to accompany them.
“I don’t see how I could manage it,” she said, adding thoughtfully:
“Though I might get Mrs. Tompkins to take care of the children and keep
house——”
“Nell, you have a wonderful mind,” said Amy, with conviction. “Mrs.
Tompkins was the very person I was about to suggest!”
“I suppose the children would run wild,” said Nell, hesitating.
“Let ’em. It would do them good for two weeks,” said Amy.
“Nothing very bad could happen in that short time,” Jessie added,
pleadingly. “And, Nell, we would have such fun.”
“Don’t you suppose I know it?” retorted Nell, longingly. But she added,
as she picked up a few of the scattered playthings in an attempt to
restore the room to order: “I will ask the Reverend about it, anyway;
and if I can get Mrs. Tompkins I may go with you yet. Now run along
downtown like good children. And you might bring us some ice-cream cones
on the way back. The young ones would appreciate it particularly.”
The girls agreed gayly, after winning from her a promise that she would
come over some evening soon and “listen in” with them.
“And bring Fol with you,” Amy added, as they went off. “He is a rather
nice boy, considering his age.”
In answer to this sally Nell laughed good-naturedly and made a face at
Amy, an action—and Nell herself would have been the first to admit
it—that was not at all a good example to set her ever-watchful and
imitative little sister, Sally.
Once at Letterblair’s, the girls discovered numerous other needs which
had not occurred to them before, and it was past noon when they had
successfully finished their shopping.
“Now for home and lunch. Jess, I have an idea—” Amy paused and regarded
her chum meditatively. “Why not run into that darling little new
restaurant down the street and have a bite to eat there? It will be a
lark.”
“Suppose we do,” agreed Jessie. “I feel as though I would not be able to
walk home without partaking of some nourishment first.”
“I declare, it is late,” said Amy, as she glanced from the store clock
to her wrist watch. “If I had had any notion you were going to keep me
so long in this place, Jess Norwood, I would not have let you come with
me.”
“I like that!” laughed Jessie. “Especially since I have been waiting for
you to get through for the past half hour.”
“So are the righteous slandered,” sighed Amy. “My friends have formed
the habit of putting all the blame upon my frail shoulders— Hello, what
have we here?”
She brought up short just outside the door of the shop and Jessie,
following hurriedly, nearly ran into her.
“Why the sudden halt?” she inquired. And just then came a shriek,
whether of joy or anguish it would have been hard to tell.
The next moment a small cyclone flung itself upon Jessie and held on to
her, still shrieking—much to the delight of the passersby.
“Help, call out the reserves!” chortled Amy, her voice choked with
laughter, while Jessie tried vainly to disengage herself from the
clutches of the small cyclone. “Henrietta Haney, do stop that shrieking.
Oh—oh, you will be the death of me, yet!”
By this time Jessie had been able to push her small assailant away from
her, and, by holding very tightly to a pair of waving arms, found it
possible to look into a small pointed face upon which every freckle
stood forth.
“Henrietta Haney—Hen,” admonished Jessie, with what severity the
occasion permitted. “Do stop making so much noise, my dear. Why,
everybody is looking at us.”
“Well,” said this surprising child, “I shouldn’t mind their lookin’, if
I was you, Miss Jessie. Ma Foley always says no amount of lookin’ ever
hurt no one.”
Jessie shot a helpless look at her chum, who was convulsed with mirth.
Little Henrietta Haney, who had first introduced herself to the Radio
Girls as a little waif from Dogtown—a down-at-heel district encroaching
upon Roselawn—in search of her missing cousin, Bertha Blair, had since
figured largely in their adventures. Owing to the interest of Mr.
Norwood and Mr. Drew—both lawyers—the little girl had recently come into
possession of part of Station Island. Henrietta, or “Hen,” as she was
familiarly called, was inordinately proud of her inheritance and seldom
overlooked an opportunity to make reference to “her island.”
Now Jessie and Amy moved the child to a less conspicuous spot and
questioned her concerning her presence there.
“You surely did not come to New Melford all alone, Hen,” said Jessie, in
concern, for she really would not have been greatly surprised at
anything the wild child might do. “Isn’t somebody with you?”
“Well, Bertha come with me,” said the child, complacently; “but I left
her.”
“You what?” gasped Amy.
“I left her,” repeated Hen, patiently. “We was comin’ along, and all of
a sudden I looks over and sees you and Miss Jessie and I just run
through the crowd and left Bertha. I didn’t knock over more than one
person, either,” she finished proudly. “And he was a little fat boy it
didn’t hurt none.”
“It only goes to show there is good in everything, even fat,” cried Amy,
in a strangled voice, and even Jessie had to smile.
“And you haven’t the least idea where Bertha is now?” questioned Jessie,
searching the passing crowds for a familiar face.
“Oh, she’ll turn up, Miss Jessie. She always does,” said the child,
confidently, adding with the first trace of anxiety she had exhibited:
“But I hope she don’t take too long. I got an awful ache where my tummy
is. I’m gettin’ hungry, I guess.”
Amy went off into a fresh paroxysm of mirth while Jessie questioned the
child closely as to the exact location of Bertha and herself when the
little girl had first seen the two Radio Girls. Being able to extract
but the vaguest information from Hen, Jessie came to the conclusion that
the only sensible thing to do was to wait just where they were until
Bertha found them.
“It was very naughty of you to run away so, Henrietta,” she scolded
gently. “I hope you will never do a thing like that again.”
“But, Miss Jessie!” the child protested, with wide-eyed surprise, “if I
hadn’t run away from Bertha I couldn’t have caught you. I just had to
run away.”
At this logic Jessie shook her head helplessly while Amy regarded the
remarkable child with unfeigned delight. As a matter of fact, Henrietta
Haney was a perpetual joy to the fun-loving Amy—“better than a box seat
at the circus,” she herself expressed it.
“There’s Bertha now!” shrieked the child, suddenly, and made another
wild dash through the crowd, bumping into half a dozen indignant
pedestrians as she went.
Amy, watching this progress with delight, chuckled softly.
“Thank goodness she is in Bertha’s charge, not ours!” she said.