Margaret Penrose - The Campfire Girls on Station Island - or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht

Jessie Norwood, gaily excited, came bounding into her sitting room waving a slit envelope over her sunny head, her face alight. She wore a pretty silk slip-on, a sports skirt, and silk hose and oxfords that her chum, Amy Drew, pronounced “the very swellest of the swell.”

Beside Amy in the sitting room was Nell Stanley, busy with sewing in her lap. The two visitors looked up in some surprise at Jessie’s boisterous entrance, for usually she was the demurest of creatures.

“What’s happened to the family now, Jess?” asked Amy, tossing back her hair. “Who has written you a billet-doux?”

“Nobody has written to me,” confessed Jessie. “But just think, girls! Here is another five dollars by mail for the hospital fund.”

Jessie had been acting as her mother’s secretary of late, and Mrs. Norwood was at the head of the committee that had in charge the raising of the foundation fund for the New Melford Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

“That radio concert panned out wonderfully,” Amy said. “If I’d done it all myself it could have been no better,” and she grinned elfishly.

“We did a lot to help,” said Nell seriously. “And I think it was just wonderful, our singing into the broadcasting horns.”

“This five dollars,” said Jessie, soberly, “was contributed by girls who earned the money themselves for the hospital. That is why I am saving the envelope and letter. I am going to write them and congratulate them for mother, when I get time.”

“Never was such a success as that radio concert,” Amy said proudly. “I have received no public resolution of thanks for suggesting it – ”

“I am not sure that you suggested it any more than the rest of us,” laughed Jessie.

“I like that!”

“I feel that I had a share in it. The Reverend says it was the most successful money-raising affair he ever had anything to do with,” laughed Nell. “And he, as a minister, has had a broad experience.” The motherless Nell Stanley, young as she was, was the very efficient head of the household in the parsonage. She always spoke affectionately of her father as “the Reverend.”

“Yes. It is a week now, and the money continues to come in,” Jessie agreed. “But now that the excitement is over – ”

“We should look for more excitement,” said Amy promptly. “Excitement is the breath of Life. 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. “Go on! Keep it up! Your metaphors are wonderfully apt, Miss Drew. Do tell us what we are to do to get into high and show a little speed?”

“Well, now, for instance,” said Amy promptly, her face glowing suddenly with excitement, “I have been waiting for somebody to suggest what we are going to do the rest of the summer. But thus far nobody has said a thing about it.”

“Well, Reverend has his vacation next month. You know that,” said Nell slowly and quite seriously. “It is a problem how we can all go away. And I am not sure that it is right that we should all tag after him. He ought to have a rest from Fred and Bob and Sally and me.”

Jessie smiled at the minister’s daughter appreciatively. “I wonder if you ought not to have a rest away from the family, Nell?”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Amy Drew.

“Don’t be foolish,” laughed Nell Stanley. “I should worry my head off if I did not have Sally with me, anyway. I think we’d better go up to the farm where we went last year.”

“‘Farm’ doesn’t spell anything for me,” said Amy, tossing her head. “Cows and crickets, horses and grasshoppers, haystacks and hicks!”

“But we could have our radio along,” Jessie said quietly. “I could disconnect this one” – pointing to her receiving set by the window – “and we might carry it along. It is easy enough to string the antenna.”

“O-oh!” groaned her chum. “She calls it easy! And I pretty nearly strained my back in two distinct places helping fix those wires after Mark Stratford’s old aeroplane tore them down.”

“Well, you want some excitement, you say,” said Jessie composedly. She went to the radio instrument, sat down before it, adjusted a set of the earphones, and opened the switch. “I wonder what is going on at this time,” she murmured.

Amy suddenly cocked her head to listen, although it could not be that she heard what came through the ether.

“Listen!” she cried.

“What under the sun is that?” demanded the clergyman’s daughter, in amazement.

Jessie murmured at the radio receiver:

“Don’t make so much noise, girls. I can’t hear myself think, let alone what might come over the air-waves.”

“Hear that!” shrieked Amy, jumping up. “That is no radio message, believe me! It comes from no broadcasting station. 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.”

“Do you suppose she can be in trouble?” asked Jessie, worriedly.

“If she is, I guarantee it will be something funny,” replied Amy, whisking out of the room.

“Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! I want to tell you!” repeated the shrill voice from the front of the Norwood house.

“Come on, Jessie,” said Nell, dropping her work and starting, too. “The child evidently wants you.”

The others followed Amy Drew down to the porch. The Norwood house where Jessie, an only child, lived with her mother and her father, a lawyer who had his office in New York, was a large dwelling even for Roselawn, which was a district of fine houses forming a part of the town of New Melford. The house was set in the middle of large grounds. Roses were everywhere – beds and beds of them. 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. The little girl sitting so very straight in the phaeton, and holding a green parasol over her head, was bound to attract the amused attention of any on-looker.

“Oh, look at little Hen!” gasped Amy, who was ahead.

“And Montmorency Shannon,” agreed Jessie. “Don’t laugh, girls! You’ll hurt their feelings.”

“Then I’ll have to shut my eyes,” declared Amy. “That parasol! And those freckles! They look green under it. Dear me, Nell, did you ever see such funny children in your life as those Dogtown kids?”