CHAPTER VIITHE CANOE TRIP
Of course, Jessie Norwood and Amy Drew did not spend all their time over the radio set in Jessie’s room. At least, they did not do so after the first two or three days.
There was not much the girls cared to hear being broadcasted before late afternoon; so they soon got back to normal. Not being obliged to get off to school every day but Saturday and Sunday, had suddenly made opportunity for many new interests.
“Or, if they are not new,” Amy said decisively, “we haven’t worn them out.”
“Do you think we shall wear out the radio, honey?” asked Jessie, laughing.
“I don’t see how the air can be worn out. And the radio stuff certainly comes through the air. Or do the Hertzian waves come through the ground, as some say?”
“You will have to ask some scientist who has gone into the matter more deeply than I have,” Jessie said demurely. “But what is this revived interest that you want to take up?”
“Canoe. Let’s take a lunch and paddle awaydown to the end of the lake. There are just wonderful flowers there. And one of the girls said that her brothers were over by the abandoned Carter place and found some wild strawberries.”
“M-mm! I love ’em,” confessed Jessie.
“Better than George Washington sundaes,” agreed her chum. “Say we go?”
“I’ll run tell Momsy. She can play with my radio while we are gone,” and Jessie went downstairs to find her mother.
“I tell you what,” said Amy as, with their paddles, the girls wended their way down to the little boathouse and landing. “Won’t it be great if they ever get pocket radios?”
“Pocket radios!” exclaimed Jessie.
“I mean what the man said in the magazine article we read in the first place. Don’t you remember? About carrying some kind of a condensed receiving set in one’s pocket—a receiving and a broadcasting set, too.”
“Oh! But that is a dream.”
“I don’t know,” rejoined Amy, who had become a thorough radio convert by this time. “It is not so far in advance, perhaps. I see one man has invented an umbrella aerial-receiving thing—what-you-may-call-it.”
“An umbrella!” gasped Jessie.
“Honest. He opens it and points the ferrule in the direction of the broadcasting station he istuned to. Then he connects the little radio set, clamps on his head harness, and listens in.”
“It sounds almost impossible.”
“Of course, he doesn’t get the sounds very loud. But hehears. He can go off in his automobile and take it all with him. Or out in a boat——Say, it would be great sport to have one in our canoe.”
“You be careful how you get into it yourself and never mind the radio,” cried Jessie, as Amy displayed her usual carelessness in embarking.
“I haven’t got on a thing that water will hurt,” declared the other girl.
“That’s all right. But everything you have on can get wet. Do be still. You are like an eel!” cried Jessie.
“Don’t!” rejoined Amy with a shudder. “I loathe eels. They are so squirmy. One wound right around my arm once when I was fishing down the lake, and I never have forgotten the slimy feel of it.”
Jessie laughed. “We won’t catch eels to-day. I never thought about fishing, anyway. I want strawberries, if there are any down there.”
Lake Monenset was not a wide body of water. Burd Alling had said it was only as wide as “two hoots and a holler.” Burd had spent a few weeks in the Tennessee Mountains once, and had broughtback some rather queer expressions that the natives there use.
Lake Monenset was several miles long. The head of it was in Roselawn at one side of the Norwood estate and almost touched the edge of Bonwit Boulevard. It was bordered by trees for almost its entire length on both sides, and it was shaped like a enormous, elongated comma.
The gardener at the Norwood estate and his helper looked after the boathouse and the canoes. The Norwood’s was not the only small estate that verged upon the lake, but like everything else about the Norwood place, its lake front was artistically adorned.
There were rose hedges down here, too, and as the two girls pushed out from the landing the breath of summer air that followed them out upon the lake was heavy with the scent of June roses.
The girls were dressed in such boating costumes as gave them the very freest movement, and they both used the paddle skillfully. The roomy canoe, if not built for great speed, certainly was built for as much comfort as could be expected in such a craft.
Jessie was in the bow and Amy at the stern. They quickly “got into step,” as Amy called it, and their paddles literally plied the lake as one. Faster and faster the canoe sped on and verysoon they rounded the wooded tongue of land that hid all the long length of the lower end of the lake.
“Dogtown is the only blot on the landscape,” panted Amy, after a while. “It stands there right where the brook empties into the lake and—and it is unsightly. Whee!”
“What are you panting for, Amy?” demanded her chum.
“For breath, of course,” rejoined Amy. “Whee! You are setting an awfully fast pace, Jess.”
“I believe you are getting over-fat, Amy,” declared Jessie, solemnly.
“Say not so! But I did eat an awfully big breakfast. The strawberries were so good! And the waffles!”
“Yet you insisted on bringing a great shoe box of lunch,” said her friend.
“Not agreatshoe box. Please! My own shoes came in it and I haven’t enormously big feet,” complained Amy. “But we must slow down.”
“Just to let you admire Dogtown, I suppose?” said Jessie, laughing.
“Well, it’s a sight! I wonder what became of that freckle-faced young one.”
“I wonder if she found her cousin,” added Jessie.
“That was a funny game; for that child to gohunting through the neighborhood after a girl. What was her name—Bertha?”
“Yes. And I have been thinking since then, Amy, that we should have asked little Henrietta some more questions.”
“Little Henrietta,” murmured Amy. “How funny! She never could fill specifications for such a name.”
“Never mind that,” Jessie flung back over her shoulder, and still breathing easily as she set a slower stroke. “What I have been thinking about is that other girl.”
“The lost girl, Bertha?”
“No, no. Or, perhaps, yes, yes!” laughed Jessie. “But I mean that girl the two women forced to go with them in the motor-car. You surely remember, Amy.”
“Oh! The kidnaped girl. My! Yes, I should say I did remember her. But what has that to do with little Henrietta? And they call her ‘Hen,’” she added, chuckling.
“I have been thinking that perhaps the girl Henrietta was looking for was the girl we saw being carried away by those women.”
“Jess Norwood! Do you suppose so?”
“I don’t know whether I suppose so or not,” laughed Jessie. “But I think if I ever see that child again I shall question her more closely.”
She said this without the first idea that littleHenrietta would cross their way almost at once. The canoe touched the grassy bank at the edge of the old Carter place at the far end of the lake just before noon. An end of the old house had been burned several years before, but the kitchen ell was still standing, with chimney complete. Picnic parties often used the ruin of the old house in which to sup. It was a shelter, at least.
“I’ve got to eat. I’ve got to eat!” proclaimed Amy, the moment she disembarked. “Actually, I am as hollow as Mockery.”
“Well, I never!” chuckled Jessie. “Your simile is remarkably apt. And I feel that I might do justice to Alma’s sandwiches, myself.”
“Where’s the sun gone?” suddenly demanded Amy, looking up and then turning around to look over the water.
“Why! I didn’t notice those clouds. It is going to shower, Amy, my dear.”
“It is going to thunder and lightning, too,” and Amy looked a little disturbed. “I confess that I do not like a thunderstorm.”
“Let us draw up the canoe and turn it over. Keep the inside of it dry. And we’ll take the cushions up to the old house,” added Jessie, briskly throwing the contents of the canoe out upon the bank.
“Ugh! I don’t fancy going into the house,” said Amy.
“Why not?”
“The old place is kind of spooky.”
“Spooks have no teeth,” chuckled Jessie. “I heard of a ghost once that seemed to haunt a country house, but after all it was only an old gentleman in a state of somnambulism who was hunting his false teeth.”
“Don’t make fun of spirits,” Amy told her, sepulchrally.
“Why not? I never saw a ghost.”
“That makes no difference. It doesn’t prove there is none. How black those clouds are! O-oh! That was a sharp flash, Jessie, honey. Let’s run. I guess the haunts in the old Carter house can’t be as bad as standing out here in a thunder-and-lightning storm.”
“To say nothing of getting our lunch wet,” chuckled Jessie, following the dark girl up the grassy path with her arms filled to overflowing.
“Ah, dear me!” wailed Amy, hurrying ahead. “And those strawberries we came for. I am afraid I shall not have enough to eat without them.”
The ruin of the Carter house stood upon a knoll, several great elms sheltering it. The dooryard was covered with a heavy sod and the ancient flower beds had run wild with weeds.
The place did have rather an eerie look. Most of the window panes were broken and the stepsand narrow porch before the kitchen door had broken away, leaving traps for careless feet.
The thunder growled behind them. Amy quickened her steps. As she had said, she shuddered at the tempest. What might be of a disturbing nature in the old farmhouse could not, she thought, be as fearsome as the approaching tempest.