Margaret Penrose

“ Jessie, Amy, and Nell had spied, on their hike and picnic, an inlet in the shore of the island facing the mainland, on the sands of which were several fish houses and several rowboats and small sailboats that the girls were sure might be had for hire.
“We might have shipped our new canoe down here and had some fun,” Amy said. “That bay is a wonderful place to sail in. Why, you can scarcely see the port on the other side of it. And the island defends it from the sea. It is as smooth as can be.” ”

“ I been here, man and boy, all my life, and I give you my word I don’t know nothing about the weather.”
“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Amy, under her breath. “What a Job’s comforter he is! Who ever heard of a fisherman before who didn’t know all about the weather?”
“Maybe we had better not go far,” Jessie, who was easily troubled, said hesitatingly.
“Come on,” said Nell. “He just wants to keep us from going out far. He is afraid for his old tub of a boat.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The sands were smooth, the surf rolled in white ruffles, and the cool green and blue of the sea was most attractive. One of the safest bathing beaches bordering Station Island was directly in front of the bungalow colony.
At four o’clock they were all in their bathing suits and joined the company already in the surf or along the sands. In any summer colony acquaintanceships are formed rapidly. Jessie and Amy had already seen some girls of about their own age whom they liked the looks of, and they were glad to see them again at the bathing hour. ”

“ I see the Reverend, as Nell calls him, out there with his coat off, in his shirt-sleeves, taking a turn with Burd at the pumps. They have rigged it for man power and are saving steam for the engines.”
“Let me see!” cried Jessie, peering out of the clouded window too. “You’d never think he was a minister. Isn’t he nice?”
Amy began to laugh. “Are all ministers supposed to be such terrible people?”
“No-o,” admitted Jessie, going back to the radio set. “But good as they usually are, we have the very best minister at the Roselawn Church, of any.” ”

“ Have you all been good boys and girls to-day? Don’t all say ‘Yes’ at once. Better stop and think about it before you speak.
“Before the bedtime story,” went on the voice out of the horn, “the Radio Man must tell some of you that you must take care, or you will get on the black list. Here is a little girl, for instance, who may be rich when she grows up. But she must have a care. People who grow up rich and own islands must be very nice.”
“Oh! Oh! That’s me!” gasped Henrietta. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ If you follow directions carefully. And with the new outfit a loop is just as effective an antenna as an outside aerial. They say, too, that to catch broadcasting for not more than twenty-five miles, not even a loop is needed, the circuits themselves acting as the absorbers of energy.”
“I’m going to try it,” declared Jessie, with more confidence. “But I feel that I understand so little about the various forms of radio, after all.”
“You have nothing on me there,” laughed the operator. “I am learning something new all the time. ”

“ Jessie observed, sighing.
“Oh, let her go,” Amy declared. “Why worry? You can’t watch her every minute we are here. She can’t very well fall overboard from this island.”
“I don’t know. She manages to do the most unexpected things,” said Jessie.
But there was so much to do in helping settle things and make the sparsely furnished bungalow comfortable that Jessie did not think for a while about Henrietta. Besides, she was desirous of setting up the radio instruments at once and stringing the antenna.
Darry and Burd helped the girls do this last. ”

“ But it seemed no laughing matter to Jessie Norwood. Her chum, however, would find a joke in even the most serious circumstance. And the moment she lay on the raft beside Jessie she began to laugh, gaspingly.
“This is no laughing matter!” Jessie declared. “How can you, Amy? Darry and Burd——”
At that instant a wild shout rose from the two 100 collegians and from the lifeguard who had rowed so energetically to their rescue. Amy broke off suddenly in her nervous laughter.
“He’s got ’em!” she shrieked. “Oh! Oh!” ”

“ The red-haired boy could not be long of serious mind.
“Never you mind, Brewster,” he said to the unfortunate driver of the red car, who was notorious for getting into trouble. “Never mind; we ain’t killed. And your father can pay Cabbage-head Tony all right. It won’t break him.”
“You impudent thing!” exclaimed Belle Ringold, who was a very proud and unpleasant girl. “You are always making trouble for people, Montmorency Shannon. It was you who would not finish stringing our radio antenna at the Carter place and so helped spoil our picnic.” ”

“ Norwood and mamma to do the cooking.”
“Oh, that’s only for this voyage. When we have only fellows aboard we all take turns cooking and get along all right.”
“Does Burd cook?” demanded Amy, in mock horror.
“Well, he is pretty bad,” admitted Darry, with a grin. “But we let him cook only on days when the sea is rough.”
“And why?” demanded his sister, with wide-open eyes.
“We never feel much like eating on rough days,” explained Darry. “You see, the Marigold kicks up quite a shindy when the sea is choppy.”
“Let us hope it will be calm all the way to Station Island,” Jessie cried. ”

“ You know, people have water on the brain and water on the knee; but seems to me a spring in your hand must be lots worse.”
“You never will be serious,” said Nell, half laughing. “If the blister was on your hand——”
“Don’t say a word! I think I shall have one before we reach the landing,” declared Amy. “And, girls, what do you suppose that grouchy old fisherman will say when he sees we lost his rudder?”
“He won’t see that,” replied Jessie.
“What! Why, listen to her!” gasped Amy. “Is she going to try to get away before he misses the rudder?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ That nasty little freckle-faced young 60 one from Dogtown will never get a foot of Hackle Island—you’ll see!”
Amy shrugged her shoulders as she and Jessie took seats at a table. She knew how to aggravate Belle Ringold, and she sometimes rather impishly enjoyed bothering the proud girl.
“And there’s one thing,” went on Belle, with emphasis, so exasperated that she did not see Nick, the clerk, who was waiting for her order, “I wouldn’t go away for the summer unless we went to a really fashionable hotel. No, indeed! Cottagers at seaside places are always of such a common sort!” ”

“ But Darry and his chum, Burd Alling, had lost their interest in the Water Thrush since they had been allowed to put into commission, and navigate themselves, the steam-yacht Marigold, which was a legacy to Darry from an uncle now deceased.
The girls got the new canoe out without assistance from the gardener or his helper. They were thoroughly capable out-of-door girls. They had erected the antenna for Jessie’s radio set without any help. Both were good boatmen—“if a girl can be a man,” to quote Amy—and they could handle the Water Thrush as well as the canoe. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ The girls were particularly interested in this form of radio telegraphy at this time. Darry had bought and was establishing a regular radio telephone receiving set, too. He could give Jessie and Amy a deal of information about the Morse alphabet as used in the commercial wireless service.
“Practice makes perfect,” he told them. “You can buy an ordinary key and sounder and practice until you can send fast. While you are learning that you automatically learn to read Morse. But I’ll have the radio set all right shortly and then we can get the station concerts.” ”

“ That radio had to be repaired. That is what Jessie told Amy, and Amy agreed. The safety of the whole yacht’s company seemed dependent upon what the two radio girls could do.
“And we must not fall down on it, Jess,” Amy said vigorously. “How goes it now?”
“This thing that Burd found goes right in here. We have got to reset a good part of the circuit to do it. I don’t see how the boys could have made such a mistake.”
“Proves what I have always maintained,” declared Amy Drew. “We girls are smarter than those boys, even if the said boys do go to college. Bah! What is college, anyway?” ”

“ Bob and Fred, those lively and ingenious youngsters, made their own friends among the boys of the bungalow colony. The three girls from Roselawn—Jessie, Amy, and Nell—found plenty to do and enjoyed themselves thoroughly during the next few days. Being all interested in radio they naturally spent some time at Jessie’s set. But unfortunately it did not work as well here as it had at home.
“And I do not know why,” Jessie ruminated. “I have been studying up about it and the more I read the less I seem to know. There are so many different opinions about how an amateur set should be built. ”

“ These Roselawn girls are just as low as the Dogtown kids. Thank goodness, Sally, we will get away from them all for the rest of the summer.”
“Your satisfaction will only be equaled by ours,” laughed Amy Drew.
“I don’t know whether you will get rid of me or not, Belle,” said Nell Stanley composedly. “If you mean to go to Hackle Island—”
“Father has engaged the handsomest suite at the hotel there,” Belle broke in. “I fancy Doctor Stanley will not feel like taking you all there, Nellie. It is very expensive.” ”

“ Station, or Hackle, Island at this end was mostly sand dunes or open flats. A little sparse grass grew in bunches, and there were clumps of beach plum bushes. Towards the golf course the land was higher and there real lawn and trees of some size were growing.
The low sand dunes stretched in gray windrows right across the island. Jessie tried to think what might have first attracted Henrietta at this end of the island. She did not believe that she would go far from the bungalow, although Amy wanted to start at once for the hotel. ”

“ I’ll always be looking for one. What an awful feeling it is to try to swim when one is being pursued by——”
“By a pair of swimming wings,” chuckled Burd. “Some imagination you’ve got, my dear Jess.”
There was a serious side to the matter, however. Although the shark scare had proved to be groundless, the quartette decided to say nothing about it to those ashore.
“Especially to Momsy,” Jessie Norwood said. “I don’t want to make her nervous. Little things annoy her.”
“She’ll be some annoyed by little Hen, then,” chuckled Amy. “Hen is worse than any shark you ever saw.” ”

“ Now, Darry, I guess we’ll have to send out signals, sha’n’t we?”
“How can we? I’ve tried the old radio already. She is as dumb as the proverbial oyster with the lockjaw.”
“Jessie is going to fix it,” said Amy, with some confidence.
“Yes she is! She’s some smart girl, I admit,” her brother observed. “But I guess that is a job that will take an expert.”
“You just see!” cried Amy. “You think she can’t do anything because she’s a girl.” 179
“Bless you! Girls equal the men nowadays. I hold Jessie as little less than a wonder. ”