Little Henrietta Haney, with her green parasol and her freckles, came
stumbling out of the low phaeton, so eager to tell Jessie the news that
excited her that she could scarcely make herself understood at all. She
fairly stuttered.
"I'm rich! I got an island and everything!" she crowed, over and over
again. Then she saw Amy Drew's delighted countenance and she added:
"Don't you laugh, Miss Amy, or I won't let you go to my island at all.
And there's radio there."
"For pity's sake, Henrietta!" cried Jessie. "Where is this island?"
"Where would it be? Out in the water, of course. There's water all
around it," declared the freckle-faced child in vigorous language.
"Don't you s'pose I know where an island ought to be?"
At that Amy Drew burst into laughter. In fact, Jessie Norwood's chum
found it very difficult on most occasions to be sober when there was any
possibility of seeing an occasion for laughter. She found amusement in
almost everything that happened.
But that made her no less helpful to Jessie when the latter had gained
her first interest in radio telephony. Whatever these two Roselawn girls
did, they did together. If Jessie planned to establish a radio set, Amy
Drew was bound to assist in the actual stringing of the antenna and in
the other work connected therewith. They always worked hand in hand.
In the first volume of this series, entitled "The Radio Girls of
Roselawn," the chums and their friends fell in with a wealth of
adventures, and one of the most interesting of those adventures was
connected with little Henrietta Haney, whom Amy had just now called
"O-Be-Joyful" Henrietta.
The more fortunate girls had been able to assist Henrietta, and finally
had found her cousin, Bertha Blair, with whom little Henrietta now
lived. By the aid of radio telephony, too, Jessie and Amy and their
friends were able to help in several charitable causes, including that
of the building of the new hospital.
In the second volume, "The Radio Girls on the Program," the friends had
the chance to speak and sing at the Stratfordtown broadcasting station.
It was an opportunity toward which they had long looked forward, and
that exciting day they were not likely soon to forget.
A week had passed, and during that time Jessie knew that little
Henrietta had been taken to Stratfordtown by her Cousin Bertha, where
they were to live with Bertha's uncle, who was the superintendent of the
Stratford Electric Company's sending station. The appearance of the
wildly excited little girl here in Roselawn on this occasion was,
therefore, a surprise.
Jessie Norwood seized hold of Henrietta by the shoulders and halted her
wild career of dancing. She looked at Montmorency Shannon accusingly and
asked:
"Do you know what she is talking about?"
"Sure, I do."
"Well, what does she mean?"
"She's been talking like that ever since I picked her up. This is
Cabbage-head Tony's pony. You know, he sells vegetables down on the edge
of town. Spotted Snake----"
"Don't call Henrietta that!" cried Jessie, reprovingly.
"Well, she gave the name to herself when she played being a witch,"
declared the Shannon boy defensively. "Anyway, Hen came down to Dogtown
last evening and hired me to drive her over here this morning."
"And when I get some of my money that's coming to me with that island,"
broke in Henrietta, "I'll buy Montmorency an automobile to drive me
around in. This old pony is too slow--a lot too slow!"
"Listen to that!" crowed Amy, in delight.
"But do tell us about the island, child," urged Nell Stanley, likewise
interested.
"A man came to Cousin Bertha's house, where we live with her uncle.
_His_ name is Blair, too; it isn't Haney. Well, this man said: 'Are you
Padriac Haney's little girl?' And I told him yes, that I wasn't grown up
yet like Bertha. And so he asked a lot of questions of Mr. Blair. They
was questions about my father and where he was married to my mother, and
where I was born, and all that."
"But where does the island come in?" demanded Amy.
"Now, don't you fuss me all up, Miss Amy," admonished the child. "Where
was I at!"
"You was at the Norwood place. I brought you," said young Shannon.
"Don't you think I know _that_?" demanded the little girl scornfully.
"Well, it's about Padriac Haney's great uncle," she hastened to say.
"Padriac was my father's name and his great uncle--I suppose that means
that he was awful big--p'r'aps like that fat man in the circus we saw.
But his name was Padriac too, and he left all his money and islands and
golf courses to my father. So it is coming to me."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Nell Stanley. "Did you ever hear such a jumbled-up
affair?"
But Montmorency Shannon nodded solemnly. "Guess it's so. Mrs. Foley was
telling my mother something about it. And Spot--I mean, Hen, must have
fallen heiress to money, for she give me a whole half dollar to drive
her over here," and his grin appeared again.
"What I want to know is the name of the island, child?" demanded Amy,
recovering from her laughter.
"Well, it's got a name all right," said Henrietta. "It is Station
Island. And there's a hotel on it. But that hotel don't belong to me.
And the radio station don't belong to me."
"O-oh! A radio station!" repeated Jessie. "That sounds awfully
interesting. I wonder where it is!"
"But the golf course belongs to me, and some bungleloos," added the
child, mispronouncing the word with her usual emphasis. "And we are
going out to this island to spend the summer--Bertha and me. Mrs. Blair
says we can. And she will go, too. The man that knows about it has told
the Blairs how to get there and--and--I invite you, Miss Jessie, and you,
Miss Amy, to come out on Station Island and visit us. Oh, we'll have
fun!"
"That sounds better than any old farm," cried Amy, gaily. "I accept,
Hen, on the spot. You can count on me."
"If it is all right so that we can go, I will promise to visit you,
dear," Jessie agreed. "But, you know, we really will have to learn more
about it."
"Cousin Bertha will tell you," said the freckle-faced child, eagerly. "I
run away to come down here to the Foleys, so as to tell you first. You
are the very first folks I have ever invited to come to live on my
island."
"Ain't you going to let me come, Spot--I mean, Hen?" asked Monty Shannon,
who sat sidewise on the seat and was paying very little attention to the
pony.
As a matter of fact, the pony belonging to the vegetable vender was so
old and sedate that one would scarcely think it necessary to watch him.
But at this very moment a red car, traveling at a pace much over the
legal speed on a public highway, came dashing around the turn just below
the Norwood house. It took the turn on two wheels, and as it swerved
dangerously toward the curb where the pony stood, its rear wheels
skidded. "Look out!" shrieked Amy. "That car is out of control! Look,
Jess!"
Her chum, by looking at it, nor the observation of any other bystander,
could scarcely avert the disaster that Amy Drew feared. But she was so
excited that she scarcely knew what she shouted. And her mad gestures
and actions utterly amazed Jessie.
"Have you got Saint Vitus's dance, Amy Drew?" Jessie demanded.
The red, low-hung car wabbled several times back and forth across the
oiled driveway. They saw a hatless young fellow in front behind the
wheel. In the narrow tonneau were two girls, and if they were not
exactly frightened they did not look happy.
Nell Stanley cried: "It's Bill Brewster's racing car; and he's got Belle
and Sally with him."
"Belle and Sally!" shrieked Amy.
Belle Ringold and her follower, Sally Moon, were not much older than Amy
and Jessie, but they were overbearing and insolent and had made
themselves obnoxious to many of their schoolmates. Wishing to appear
grown up, and wishing, above all things, to attract Amy's brother Darry
and Darry's chum, Burd Alling, and feeling that in some way the two
Roselawn chums interfered in this design, they were especially
unpleasant in their behavior toward them. Sometimes Belle and Sally had
been able to make the Roselawn girls feel unhappy by their haughty
speech and what Amy called their "snippy ways." Just now, however,
circumstances forbade the two unpleasant girls annoying anybody.
The others had identified the reckless driver and his passengers. At
least, all had recognized the party save Montmorency Shannon. He just
managed to jump out of the phaeton in time. The pony was still asleep
when the rear of the skidding red car crashed against the phaeton and
crushed it into a wreck across the curbstone.