E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Juliet Sutherland, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
or
The Wireless from the Steam Yacht
by
MARGARET PENROSE
New York
The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
Publishers
Copyright by
The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
Printed in U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "O-Be-Joyful" Henrietta 1
II. A Puzzling Question 9
III. A Flare-Up 17
IV. Uncertainties 26
V. Into Trouble and Out 36
VI. Changed Plans 47
VII. Forecasts 56
VIII. Aboard the "Marigold" 63
IX. Gossip Out of the Ether 70
X. Island Adventures 77
XI. Trouble 84
XII. A Double Race 91
XIII. More Than One Adventure 98
XIV. Something New in Radio 107
XV. Henrietta in Disgrace 114
XVI. "Radio Control" 122
XVII. The Tempest 132
XVIII. From One Thing to Another 139
XIX. Bound Out 147
XX. Something Serious 156
XXI. Work for All 166
XXII. A Radio Call That Failed 172
XXIII. Only Hope 180
XXIV. The Mysterious Message 189
XXV. Saved by Radio 196
THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
CHAPTER I--"O-BE-JOYFUL" HENRIETTA
Jessie Norwood, gaily excited, came bounding into her sitting room
waving a slit envelope over her sunny head, her face alight. She wore a
pretty silk slip-on, a sports skirt, and silk hose and oxfords that her
chum, Amy Drew, pronounced "the very swellest of the swell."
Beside Amy in the sitting room was Nell Stanley, busy with sewing in her
lap. The two visitors looked up in some surprise at Jessie's boisterous
entrance, for usually she was the demurest of creatures.
"What's happened to the family now, Jess?" asked Amy, tossing back her
hair. "Who has written you a billet-doux?"
"Nobody has written to me," confessed Jessie. "But just think, girls!
Here is another five dollars by mail for the hospital fund."
Jessie had been acting as her mother's secretary of late, and Mrs.
Norwood was at the head of the committee that had in charge the raising
of the foundation fund for the New Melford Women's and Children's
Hospital.
"That radio concert panned out wonderfully," Amy said. "If I'd done it
all myself it could have been no better," and she grinned elfishly.
"We did a lot to help," said Nell seriously. "And I think it was just
wonderful, our singing into the broadcasting horns."
"This five dollars," said Jessie, soberly, "was contributed by girls who
earned the money themselves for the hospital. That is why I am saving
the envelope and letter. I am going to write them and congratulate them
for mother, when I get time."
"Never was such a success as that radio concert," Amy said proudly. "I
have received no public resolution of thanks for suggesting it----"
"I am not sure that you suggested it any more than the rest of us,"
laughed Jessie.
"I like that!"
"I feel that I had a share in it. The Reverend says it was the most
successful money-raising affair he ever had anything to do with,"
laughed Nell. "And he, as a minister, has had a broad experience." The
motherless Nell Stanley, young as she was, was the very efficient head
of the household in the parsonage. She always spoke affectionately of
her father as "the Reverend."
"Yes. It is a week now, and the money continues to come in," Jessie
agreed. "But now that the excitement is over----"
"We should look for more excitement," said Amy promptly. "Excitement is
the breath of Life. Peace is stagnation. The world moves, and all that.
If we get into a rut we are soon ready for the Old Lady's Home over
beyond Chester."
"I'm sure," returned Jessie, a little hotly, "we are always doing
something, Amy. We do not stagnate."
"Sure!" scoffed her chum, in continued vigor of speech. "We go swizzing
along like a snail! 'Fast' is the name for us--tied _fast_ to a post.
Molasses running up hill in January is about our natural pace here in
Roselawn."
Nell burst into gay laughter. "Go on! Keep it up! Your metaphors are
wonderfully apt, Miss Drew. Do tell us what we are to do to get into
high and show a little speed?"
"Well, now, for instance," said Amy promptly, her face glowing suddenly
with excitement, "I have been waiting for somebody to suggest what we
are going to do the rest of the summer. But thus far nobody has said a
thing about it."
"Well, Reverend has his vacation next month. You know that," said Nell
slowly and quite seriously. "It is a problem how we can all go away. And
I am not sure that it is right that we should all tag after him. He
ought to have a rest from Fred and Bob and Sally and me."
Jessie smiled at the minister's daughter appreciatively. "I wonder if
_you_ ought not to have a rest away from the family, Nell?"
"Hear! Hear!" cried Amy Drew.
"Don't be foolish," laughed Nell Stanley. "I should worry my head off if
I did not have Sally with me, anyway. I think we'd better go up to the
farm where we went last year."
"'Farm' doesn't spell anything for me," said Amy, tossing her head.
"Cows and crickets, horses and grasshoppers, haystacks and hicks!"
"But we could have our radio along," Jessie said quietly. "I could
disconnect this one"--pointing to her receiving set by the window--"and we
might carry it along. It is easy enough to string the antenna."
"O-oh!" groaned her chum. "She calls it easy! And I pretty nearly
strained my back in two distinct places helping fix those wires after
Mark Stratford's old aeroplane tore them down."
"Well, you want some excitement, you say," said Jessie composedly. She
went to the radio instrument, sat down before it, adjusted a set of the
earphones, and opened the switch. "I wonder what is going on at this
time," she murmured.
Amy suddenly cocked her head to listen, although it could not be that
she heard what came through the ether.
"Listen!" she cried.
"What under the sun is that?" demanded the clergyman's daughter, in
amazement.
Jessie murmured at the radio receiver:
"Don't make so much noise, girls. I can't hear myself think, let alone
what might come over the air-waves."
"Hear that!" shrieked Amy, jumping up. "That is no radio message,
believe me! It comes from no broadcasting station. Listen, girls!"
She raised the screen at a window and leaned out. Jessie, removing the
tabs from her ears, likewise gained some understanding of what was going
on outside. A shrill voice was shrieking:
"Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! I got the most wonderful thing to tell you.
Oh, Miss Jessie!"
"For pity's sake!" murmured Jessie.
"Isn't that little Hen from Dogtown?" asked Nell Stanley.
"That is exactly who it is," agreed Amy, starting for the door. "Little
Hen is one live wire. 'O-Be-Joyful' Henrietta is never lukewarm. There
is always something doing with that child."
"Do you suppose she can be in trouble?" asked Jessie, worriedly.
"If she is, I guarantee it will be something funny," replied Amy,
whisking out of the room.
"Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! I want to tell you!" repeated the shrill
voice from the front of the Norwood house.
"Come on, Jessie," said Nell, dropping her work and starting, too. "The
child evidently wants you."
The others followed Amy Drew down to the porch. The Norwood house where
Jessie, an only child, lived with her mother and her father, a lawyer
who had his office in New York, was a large dwelling even for Roselawn,
which was a district of fine houses forming a part of the town of New
Melford. The house was set in the middle of large grounds. Roses were
everywhere--beds and beds of them. At one side was the boathouse and
landing at the head of Lake Mononset. At the foot of the front lawn was
Bonwit Boulevard, across which stood the house where Amy Drew lived with
her father, Wilbur Drew, also a New York lawyer, and her mother and her
brother Darrington.
But it was that which stood directly before the gateway of the Norwood
place which attracted the gaze of the three girls. A little old basket
phaeton, drawn by a fat and sleepy looking brown-and-white pony, and
driven by a grinning boy in overalls and with bare feet, made an object
quite odd enough to stare at. The little girl sitting so very straight
in the phaeton, and holding a green parasol over her head, was bound to
attract the amused attention of any on-looker.
"Oh, look at little Hen!" gasped Amy, who was ahead.
"And Montmorency Shannon," agreed Jessie. "Don't laugh, girls! You'll
hurt their feelings."
"Then I'll have to shut my eyes," declared Amy. "That parasol! And those
freckles! They look green under it. Dear me, Nell, did you ever see such
funny children in your life as those Dogtown kids?"
Jessie ran down the steps and the path to the street. When the freckled
child saw her coming she stood up and waved the parasol at the Roselawn
girl.
Henrietta Haney was a child in whom the two Roselawn girls had become
much interested while she had lived in the Dogtown district of New
Melford with Mrs. Foley and her family. Montmorency Shannon was a
red-haired urchin from the same poor quarters, and he and Henrietta were
the best of friends.
"Oh, Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! What d'you think? I'm rich!"
"She certainly is rich," choked Amy, following her chum with Nell
Stanley. "She's a scream."
"What do you mean--that you are rich, Henrietta?" Jessie asked, smiling
at her little protégé.
"I tell you, I am rich. Or, I am goin' to be. I own an island and
everything. And there's bungleloos on it, and fishing, and a golf
course, and everything. I am rich."
"What can the child mean?" asked Jessie Norwood, looking back at her
friends. "She sounds as though she believed it was actually so."