CHAPTER XTHE PRIZE IDEA
When the two girls paddled back up the lake after their adventure at the old Carter house, Henrietta squatted in the middle of the canoe and seemed to enjoy the trip immensely.
“I seen these sort of boats going up and down the lake, and they look pretty. Me and Charlie Foley and some of the other boys at Dogtown made a raft. But Mr. Foley busted it with an ax. He said we had no business using the coal-cellar door and Mrs. Foley’s bread-mixing board. So we didn’t get to go sailing,” observed the freckle-faced child.
Almost everything the child said made Amy laugh. Nevertheless, like her chum, Amy felt keenly the pathos of the little girl’s situation. Perhaps with Amy Drew this interest went no farther than sympathy, whereas Jessie was already, and before this incident, puzzling her mind regarding what might be done to help Henrietta and improve her situation.
The girls paddled the canoe in to a broken landing just below the scattered shacks of Dogtown,and Henrietta went ashore. It was plain that she would have enjoyed riding farther in the canoe.
“If you see us come down this way again, honey,” Amy said, “run down here to the shore and we will take you aboard.”
“If Mrs. Foley will let you,” added Jessie.
“I dunno what Mrs. Foley will say about the strawberries. I told her I’d bring home some if she’d let me go over there. And here I come home without even the bucket.”
“It is altogether too wet to pick wild strawberries,” Jessie said. “I wanted some myself. But we shall have to go another day. And you can find your bucket then, Henrietta.”
The chums drove their craft up the lake and in half an hour sighted the Norwood place and its roses. Everything ashore was saturated, of course. And in one place the girls saw that the storm had done some damage.
A grove of tall trees at the head of the lake and near the landing belonging to the Norwood place was a landmark that could be seen for several miles and from almost any direction on this side of Bonwit Boulevard. As the canoe swept in toward the dock Amy cried aloud:
“Look! Look, Jess! No wonder we thought that thunder was so sharp. It struck here.”
“The thunder struck?” repeated Jessie, laughing.“Iamthunderstruck, then. You mean——Oh, Amy! That beautiful great tree!”
She saw what had first caught Amy’s eye. One of the tallest of the trees was split from near its top almost to the foot of the trunk. The white gash looked like a wide strip of paper pasted down the stick of ruined timber.
“Isn’t that too bad?” said Amy, staring.
But suddenly Jessie drove her paddle deep into the water and sent the canoe in a dash to the landing. She fended off skillfully, hopped out, and began to run.
“What is the matter, Jess?” shrieked Amy. “You’ve left me to do all the work.”
“Momsy!” gasped out Jessie, looking back for an instant. “She was scared to death that the lightning would strike the house because of the radio aerial.”
Her chum came leaping up the hill behind her, having moored the canoe with one hitch. She cried out:
“No danger from lightning if you shut the switch at the set. You know that, Jessie.”
“But Momsy doesn’t know it,” returned the other girl, and dashed madly into the house.
She had forgotten to tell her mother of that fact—the safety of the closed receiving switch. She felt condemned. Suppose her mother had been frightened by the thunder and lightning andshould pay for it with one of her long and torturing sick headaches?
“Momsy! Momsy!” she cried, bursting into the hall.
“Your mother is down town, Miss Jessie,” said the quiet voice of the parlor maid. “She drove down in her own car before the storm.”
“Oh! She wasn’t here when the lightning struck——”
“No, Miss Jessie. And that was some thunder-clap! Cook says she’ll never get over it. But I guess she will. Bill, the gardener’s boy, says it struck a tree down by the water.”
“So it did,” Jessie rejoined with relief. “Well, I certainly am glad Momsy wasn’t here. It’s all right, Amy,” she called through the screen doors.
“I am glad. I thought it was all wrong by the way you ran. Now let’s go back and get our rugs and the rest of the junk out of the canoe. And, oh, me! Ain’t I hungry!”
Jessie ignored this oft-repeated complaint, saying:
“We should have remembered about the bazaar committee meeting. Momsy would go to that. Do you know, Amy, she thinks she can get the other ladies to agree to have the lawn party out here.”
“Here, in Roselawn?” asked her chum.
“Right here on our place.”
“How fine!” ejaculated Amy. “But, Jessie, I wish I could think of some awfully smart idea to work in connection with the lawn party. That lovely, lovely sports coat that Letterblair has in his window has taken my eye.”
“I saw it,” Jessie admitted. “And the card says it goes to the girl under eighteen who suggests the best money-making scheme in unusual channels that can be used by the bazaar committee. Yes, it’s lovely.”
“Let’s put on our thinking-caps, honey, and try for it. Only two days more.”
“And if we win it, shall we divide the coat between us?”
“No, we’d cast lots for it,” said Amy seriously. “It is a be-a-utiful coat!”
That evening after dinner Jessie climbed upon the arm of her father’s big chair in the library, sitting there and swinging her feet just as though she were a very small child again. He hugged her up to him with one arm while he laid down the book he was reading.
“Out with it, daughter,” Mr. Norwood said. “What is the desperate need for a father?”
“It is not very desperate, and really it is none of my business,” began Jessie thoughtfully.
“And that does not surprise me. It will not be the first time that you have shown interest in something decidedly not your concern.”
“Oh! But I am concerned about her, Daddy.”
“A lady in the case, eh?”
“A girl. Like Amy and me. Oh, no!Notlike Amy and me. But about our age.”
“What is her name and what has she done?”
“Bertha. Or, perhaps it isn’t Bertha. But we think so.”
“Somehow, it seems to me, you have begun wrong. Who is this young person who may be Bertha but who probably is not?”
Jessie told him about the “kidnaped” girl then. But it spilled out of her mouth so rapidly and so disconnectedly that it is little wonder that Mr. Norwood, lawyer though he was, got a rather hazy idea of the incident connected with the strange girl’s being captured on Dogtown Lane.
In fact, he got that girl and little, freckled Henrietta Haney rather mixed up in his mind. He found himself advising to have the child come to the house so that Momsy could see her. Momsy always knew what to do to help such unfortunates.
“And you think there can be nothing done for that other girl?” Jessie asked, rather mournfully.
“Oh! You mean the girl you saw put in the automobile and taken away? Well, we don’t know her or the woman who took her, do we?”
“No-o. Though Amy says she thinks she hasseen somebody who looks like the woman driving the car before.”
“Humph! You have no case,” declared Mr. Norwood, in his most judicial manner. “I fear it would be thrown out of court.”
“Oh, dear!”
“If your little acquaintance could describe her cousin so that we could give the description to the police—or broadcast it by radio,” and Mr. Norwood laughed.
Jessie suddenly hopped down from the chair arm and began a pirouette about the room, clapping her hands as she danced.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” she cried. “Radio! Oh, Daddy! you are just the nicest man. You give me such fine ideas!”
“You evidently see your way clear to a settlement of this legal matter you brought to my attention,” said Mr. Norwood quite gravely.
“Nothing like that! Nothing like that!” cried Jessie. “Oh, no. But you have given me such a fine idea for winning the prize Momsy and the other ladies are offering. I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” and she danced out of the room.