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

“We-ell, not so often now,” Jessie said. “I have learned more about tuning and wave-lengths. But, of course, I have only a single circuit crystal receiving set. I have been talking to Dad about getting a better one.”

“Monty will show you,” Amy said with confidence, as they knocked at the Shannon door.

The little cottage was small. Downstairs there were but two rooms. The door gave access to the kitchen, and beyond was the “sitting-room,” of which Monty’s mother was inordinately proud. She was a widow, and helped herself and her children by doing fine laundry work for the wealthy people of New Melford.

From the front room when the girls entered came sounds that they recognized – radio sounds which held their instant attention, although they were merely market reports at that hour in the forenoon.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Bertha Blair said, clasping her hands. “I never can get over the wonder of it.”

“Same here,” Amy declared. “When Jess and I listened to you singing the ‘Will o’ the Wisp’ last night it seemed almost shivery that we should recognize the very tones of your voice out of the air.”

“Huh!” exclaimed Montmorency, grinning. “I got so I know the announcers, too. When that Mr. Blair speaks I know him. Of course, I know Mr. Mark Stratford’s voice, for I’ve talked with him. I wouldn’t have such a fine machine here, only he advised me.”

“Tell me,” Jessie said, “what is the difference between my receiving set and yours, Monty?”

“If you want to hear clearly and keep outside radio out of your machine, use a regenerative radio set with an audion detector. The whole business, Miss Jessie, is in the detector, after all. A regenerative set of this kind is selective enough – that’s the expression Mr. Mark used – to enable any one to tune out all but a few commercial stations. And they don’t often butt in to annoy you. For sure, you’ll kill all the amateur squeak-boxes and other transmission stations of that class.

“Now, I’m going to tune in for Stratfordtown. They are sending the Government weather reports and mother wants to know should she water her tomatoes or depend on a thunderstorm,” and he grinned at Mrs. Shannon, who stood, an awkward but smiling figure, in the doorway between the two rooms.

“’Tis too wonderful a thing for me to understand, at all, at all,” admitted the widow. “However can they tell you out of that machine there is a thunderstorm coming?”

“Listen!” exclaimed the boy eagerly. There was a horn on the set and no need for earphones. He had tuned the market reports out. From the horn came a different voice. But the words the visitors heard had nothing to do with the report on the weather. “What’s the matter?” demanded Monty Shannon. “Listen to this, will you?”

“… she will come home at once. This is serious – a serious call for Bertha Blair.”

“Do you hear that?” almost shrieked Amy Drew. “Why, it must mean you, Bertha!”

CHAPTER VI – CHANGED PLANS

“How ridiculous!” Jessie cried. “That surely cannot mean you, Bertha.”

“Hush!” begged Amy. “It’s uncanny.”

Again the slow voice enunciated: “Bertha Blair will come home at once. This is serious – a serious call for Bertha Blair.”

“Criminy!” shouted Monty Shannon. “I know who that is. It’s Mr. Mark Stratford.”

“He is calling for you, Bertha,” said Jessie. “Can it be possible?”

“Something has happened!” gasped Bertha, starting for the door of the cottage. “Where is that child?”

“Never mind Henrietta. We will take care of her,” Jessie called after the worried girl, wishing to relieve her anxiety.

Bertha ran out of the house, and the next moment the Roselawn girls heard the car start. Bertha was being whisked away to Stratfordtown. The voice of Mark Stratford continued to repeat the call several times. Then he read the weather report, as expected.

“I can tell you one thing,” Jessie said eagerly to her chum and the Shannons. “Mark Stratford does not usually give out the announcements from that station. Now, does he, Monty?”

“No, ma’am, Miss Jessie. Only once in a while.”

“Then something has happened at the Blair house, or to Mr. Blair himself. That is why they send out this call, hoping that somebody down here would get it and tell Bertha.”

“Think! How funny it must feel to hear your name called out of the air in that way,” Amy remarked.

“Why, we had that experience ourselves,” Jessie said. “Don’t you remember? Mark thanked us publicly for finding his watch.”

“But that was not just like this,” replied Amy. “Anyway, there is something unsatisfactory about radio – and always will be – until we can ‘talk back’ as well as receive. See! If Monty had a sending set as well as a receiving, he could have answered Mark Stratford, and told him Bertha had heard the call and was starting home without any delay.”

“I am afraid something really serious has happened,” Jessie said. “Let’s go back home and call up Stratfordtown on the telephone.”

“We’ll take Hen along with us,” agreed Amy. “You said we’d take care of her.”

This the Roselawn girls did. When they set out from Dogtown in their canoe, Henrietta sat amidships. She was delighted to visit the Norwoods. She had stayed over night with Jessie before.

They passed the flotilla of tubs and barrels that the Dogtown children had set afloat. Mrs. Shannon would never see her washtubs again. Meanwhile the Costello twins and Charlie Foley had set out to walk around the lake and recover the big canoe from the place where it had drifted ashore on the other side.

“They certainly are the worst young ones,” commented Amy Drew. “Always in mischief of some kind.”

“There ain’t much else to get into at Dogtown,” said little Henrietta soberly. “We don’t have any boy scouts or girl scouts or anything like that. They have them at Stratfordtown. Mrs. Blair told me about ’em. I guess I’ll join the girl scouts and take ’em all out on my island.”

Little Henrietta was still intensely excited about “her island.” What the Roselawn girls heard over the telephone when they got home again was not encouraging. It seemed at first that Henrietta must be disappointed.

Jessie ran in to the telephone as soon as they arrived. She did not know the number of Mr. Blair’s private telephone – if he had one. But she knew how to get in touch with Mark Stratford whether he was at his home or at the offices of the Stratford Electric Company. She was able to speak with the young man almost at once, and questioned him excitedly.

“Yes. I know that Bertha has got home. I took a chance to reach her at Dogtown when I heard where she had gone,” Mark Stratford said. “You know Monty Shannon is a protégé of mine, and I have an idea he is listening in most of the time at that set he has built.”

“But what is the matter? Has Mr. Blair been hurt?”

“It is Mrs. Blair. She fell downstairs and has hurt herself severely. Did it not ten minutes after Bertha went out. Broke her leg. She will be in bed for weeks. I understand that they were planning to go away for the summer,” said Mark, sympathetically. “But that cannot be now. At least, I suppose Bertha will have to remain to take care of her aunt.”

“Sh! Don’t tell little Hen,” begged Amy Drew, when she heard this. “The child will be heartbroken. Without Bertha and Mrs. Blair Hennie can’t go to her island.”

Jessie made no audible reply to this. And she certainly had no intention of telling Henrietta the very worst. She discussed the situation with Momsy, and before Daddy Norwood returned from town that afternoon mother and daughter had just about perfected a very nice plan for little Henrietta.

“Well, you are to go to Hackle Island, Momsy,” Mr. Norwood said, when he first came in. “I have signed the agreement. You can send the people down to make the house ready to-morrow, if you like. I understand there will not be much to do about the place. We can all go by the end of the week.”

“You take my breath away – as usual,” laughed Jessie’s mother. “You are always so prompt, Robert.”

“And you will have a house full of company, I suppose?” he rejoined, but looking at Jessie with a smile.

“We are going to have one guest you didn’t expect, Daddy,” rejoined his daughter. She told him swiftly of what had happened at the Blair home in Stratfordtown. “So that spoils it all for little Henrietta, you see, Daddy, if we don’t take her. And you know she is crazy to see what she calls her island.”

“Sure that she won’t make you and Momsy crazy, Jess?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “That child is as lively as an eel and as noisy as a steam-roller.”

“How can you say such things, Daddy?” cried Jessie, shaking a reproving head. “We have agreed to take her if you and the Blairs are willing. And Momsy and I will try to teach her the things she’ll need to know.”

“M-mm. Well, perhaps you will have success. You have done pretty well with me,” laughed Mr. Norwood, who made believe that his wife and daughter had “brought him up by hand.” “Being guided in any way will be a novel experience for little Hen, that is sure.”

He agreed so well with his wife’s and Jessie’s plans, however, that he called Mr. Blair up that evening and proposed to keep little Henrietta and take her to Hackle, or Station, Island, while Mrs. Blair was confined to her house. As Jessie’s father, along with Mr. Drew, had taken legal charge of Henrietta’s affairs for the time being, it was right that the orphan child should be in Mrs. Norwood’s care.