Read Ebook: The Radio Girls on Station Island: The wireless from the steam yacht by Penrose Margaret Gooch Thelma Illustrator

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Ebook has 1294 lines and 43932 words, and 26 pages

"What can the child mean?" asked Jessie Norwood, looking back at her friends. "She sounds as though she believed it was actually so."

A PUZZLING QUESTION

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.

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?"

"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.

"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.

"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.

A FLARE-UP

The red car stopped before it completely overturned. Then, when the exhaust was shut off, the screams of the two girls in the back seat could be heard. But nobody shouted any louder than Montmorency Shannon.

The red-haired boy had leaped from the phaeton and had seized the pony by the bit. Otherwise the surprised animal might have set off for home, Amy said, "on a perfectly apoplectic run."

The little animal stood shaking and pawing, nothing but the shafts and whiffle-tree remaining attached to it by the harness. The rear wheels of the racing car were entangled in the phaeton and it was slewed across the road.

"Now see what you've done! Now see what you've done!" one of the girls in the car was saying, over and over.

"Well, I couldn't help it, Belle," whined the reckless young Brewster. "You and Sally Moon aren't hurt. And you asked to ride with me, anyway."

"Oh, I don't mean you, Bill!" exclaimed the girl behind him. "But that horrid boy with his pony carriage! What business had he to get in the way?"

"Hey! 'Tain't my carriage, you Ringold girl," declared Monty Shannon. "It's Cabbage-head Tony's. He'll sue your father for this, Bill Brewster. And you come near killing me and the pony."

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