The Campfire Girls on Station Island: or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht

“Where is your big canoe?” demanded Amy, who could scarcely paddle from laughter, in spite of the evident danger the children were in.

“That is what we started after,” said Montmorency Shannon, his red head sticking out of the barrel like a full-blown hollyhock. “It got away in the night, or somebody let it go, and we saw it away down by the Carter place. So – so we thought we’d go after it.”

“And I warrant your mothers don’t know what you are doing,” Jessie said sternly.

“Oh, they will!” cried Henrietta, virtuously.

“When they miss the washtubs,” put in Amy, with laughter.

“When we tell ’em,” corrected little Henrietta. “And we always tell ’em everything we do.”

“I see. After it is all over,” Jessie commented.

“We-ell,” said Henrietta, pouting, “we can’t tell ’em what we have done before we do it, can we? For we never know ourselves.”

“You certainly cannot beat that for logic,” declared Amy. She drove the head of the canoe to the tub of the nearest Costello twin. “Get in here carefully, Micky. You are going down.”

“That’s ’cause Aloysius always gets the best tub. He ain’t sinking none,” said Michael Costello, scowling at his twin.

“Quick!” commanded Amy, and the disgruntled Costello swarmed over the side of the canoe. “We can take in one more. Who is the nearest drowned?”

“I’m sitting in half a foot of water,” confessed the red-haired Shannon, grinning.

“A little soaking will do you good. I can guess who suggested this crazy venture,” Jessie said. “Come, Henrietta.”

“I need her to trim ship!” cried Charlie Foley.

“What do you want to trim your ship with – red, white and blue?” demanded Amy. “If that trough sinks I know you can swim, Charlie.”

The crowd would have had some difficulty in getting back to shore with the wind blowing as freshly as it did if the girls had not come along and, in relays, helped them all back.

“What Mrs. Shannon will say when she sees her two washtubs floating off like that, I don’t know,” sighed Henrietta, after they were all ashore.

“One of ’em’s sunk, so she can’t see it,” Micky Costello said calmly. “Maybe the other will go down. Don’t you big girls say anything and maybe she won’t find it out.”

Jessie and Amy had headed for Dogtown in the first place without any expectation of playing a life-saving part. Jessie thought they ought to see Mrs. Foley, who was fleshy and easy of disposition, and ask her about Henrietta’s visit. So they accompanied the freckle-faced little girl to the Foley house.

“I ain’t telling ’em all they can come to visit my island, Miss Jessie,” said the little girl. “But of course, the Foleys could come. Mrs. Blair and Bertha wouldn’t mind just them, of course. There’s only Mrs. Foley and Charlie and Billy and the baby and three more boys and – and – well, that’s all, only Mr. Foley. He wouldn’t want to come.”

“You would better be sure of your island, and just how much you own of it, Hen,” advised Amy Drew. “It may not be big enough to hold everybody you want to invite.”

“Why, Miss Amy, it’s a awful big island,” declared little Henrietta. “It’s got a whole golf link on it. I heard Mr. Blair say so.”

The “bulgy” Mrs. Foley welcomed the Roselawn girls with her usual copiousness. Of course, she had the youngest Foley in her lap, and the housework was “at sixes and sevens,” since little Henrietta had been at Stratfordtown for a week.

“How I’m going to git used, young ladies, to havin’ that child away is more than I can say. ’Tis a great mistake I have all boys for childers. There is nothing like a smart girl around the house.”

Jessie, very curious, asked the woman what she knew about Henrietta’s wonderful story of wealth.

“Sure, I’ve always expected it would come to her some day,” declared Mrs. Foley. “Her mother, who was a good neighbor of mine before we moved out here to the lake, said Hen’s father come of rich folks. They used to drive their own carriage. That was before automobiles come in so plenteous.”

“Did Bertha ever say anything about it, Mrs. Foley?”

“Not much. ’Tis Hen will be the rich wan. Oh, yes. And glad I am if the child is about to come into her own. She’s no business to be running down here every chance she gets. I had himself telephone to Bertha when he went to town this morning, and it is likely she will be here after the child. Hen’s as wild as a hawk.”

Bertha Blair, in fact, appeared in a hired car before Jessie and Amy were ready to return in their canoe to Roselawn. She was quite as excited as Henrietta had been about the strange fortune that promised to come into their lives. Bertha could tell the chums from Roselawn many more particulars of the Padriac Haney property.

“If little Henrietta will only be good and not be so wild and learn her lessons and mind what she’s told,” Bertha said seriously, “maybe she will have money and an island – or part of one, anyway. But she does not behave very well. She is as wild as a March hare.”

Little Henrietta looked serious for her; but Mrs. Foley took her part at once.

“Sure don’t be expectin’ too much of the child at wance, Bertha. She’s run as wild as the wind itself here. She’s fought and played with these Dogtown kids since she was able to toddle around. What would ye expect?”

“But she must learn,” declared the older girl. “Mrs. Blair won’t take us to the island this summer if she is not good.”

“Then I’ll go myself,” announced Henrietta. “It’s my island, ain’t it? Who has a better right there?”

Jessie took a hand at this point, shaking her head gravely at the freckled little girl.

“Do you suppose, Henrietta Haney, that your friends – like Mrs. Foley or Mrs. Blair, or even Amy and I – will want to come to your island to see you if you are not a good girl?”

“Say, if I get rich can’t I do like I want to – like other rich folks?”

“You most certainly cannot. Rich people, if they are to be loved, must be even more careful in their conduct than poor folks.”

“We-ell,” confessed the freckled little girl frankly, “I’d rather be rich than be loved. If I can’t be both easy, I’ll be rich.”

“Such amazing worldliness!” sighed Amy, raising her hands in mock horror.

But Jessie Norwood truly wished the little girl to be nice. Poor little Henrietta, however, had much to unlearn. She chattered continually about the island she owned and the riches she was to enjoy. The smaller children of Dogtown followed her – and the green parasol – about as though they were enchanted.

“’Tis a witch she certainly is,” declared Mrs. Foley. “She’s bewitched them all, so she has. But I’m lost widout her, meself. When a woman has six – and them all boys – and a man that drinks – ”

This statement of her personal affairs had been so often heard by the three girls that they all tried to sidetrack Mrs. Foley’s complaint. It was Jessie, however, who advanced a really good reason for getting out of the Foley house.

“I promised Monty Shannon I would look at his radio set,” she said, jumping up. “You will excuse us for a little, Mrs. Foley? You are not going back to Stratfordtown at once, Bertha?”

“Before long. I have only hired the car for the forenoon. The man has another job this afternoon. And I must find that Henrietta again,” for the freckle-faced little girl was as lively, so Amy said, as a water-bug – “one of those skimmery things with long legs that dart along the surface of the water.”

The trio went out and across the cinder-covered yard to the Shannon house. The immediate surroundings of Dogtown were squalid, although its site upon the edge of Lake Mononset might have been made very pleasant indeed.

“If these boys like Monty Shannon and some of the girls stay at home when they grow up they surely will improve the looks of the village,” Jessie had said. “For Monty and his kind are altogether too smart not to want to live as other people do.”

“You’ve said it,” agreed Amy, with enthusiasm. “He is smart. He has a better radio receiver than you have. Wait till you see.”

“How do you know?” asked the surprised Jessie.

“He was telling me about it. You know how often some ‘squeak box,’ or other amateur operator, breaks in on our concerts.”