Read Ebook: The Radio Girls on the program by Penrose Margaret Gooch Thelma Illustrator

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Ebook has 1181 lines and 39340 words, and 24 pages

ttending the wreck of the airplane and the departure of the Stratfords in the private ambulance.

The exciting incidents of the evening were not concluded by the departure of the injured Mark and the despatch of dinner. As the Norwoods came out upon the lighted porch they heard voices on the lawn near the wrecked aeroplane.

"Who is Chapman shooing off the place?" asked Mrs. Norwood of her husband.

"Neighborhood children, I suppose," said Jessie's father carelessly. "Come to see the wreck. Better not let them stay to-night--Mr. Stratford said he would send a truck and men to pick up the pieces in the morning--for there are small parts of the plane that might be carried away by inquisitive boys."

"Oh, Daddy, that isn't a boy!" Jessie suddenly declared, and darted down the steps.

The chauffeur had evidently been peremptory in his remarks to the uninvited callers. A shrill voice replied to Chapman's warning:

"You needn't be so grouchy about it. We wouldn't carry off anything. It ain't no good, anyway--not even for kindling. We just wanted to look at it."

"Well, now you've seen it, beat it," growled out Chapman.

"Ain't we going?" demanded the same sharp voice. "We seen the old thing fall from clear over to Dogtown, and we jest wanted to see if it did any damage to Miss Jessie's wires and things. And it did."

"Oh, Henrietta!" cried Jessie, running across the lawn. "Don't go. We haven't seen you for a week."

"And you ain't going to see me for another, if that man is going to chase us off your place, Miss Jessie," said the sharp little voice. "We wasn't doing anything."

"Of course you weren't, Henrietta," agreed Jessie. "And Chapman did not understand."

"Oh, I understand all right, Miss Jessie," the chauffeur said. "I know those Dogtown kids."

"Be careful!" commanded Jessie, warmly. "You know I am fond of Henrietta, Chapman."

"Ain't nobody here but Charlie Foley and the Costello twins and Montmorency Shannon, and me," declared Henrietta promptly. "Who does he think is a thief, I'd like to know?"

"Now, Henrietta!" admonished Jessie. "That isn't nice, and you know it. You mustn't meddle with any part of the broken aeroplane, for the man who owns it is going to come for it to-morrow and will want all the parts."

"They were poking around in the ruins all right," grumbled Chapman, moving away.

"If he thinks I took anything, he can search me," said one of the Dogtown boys.

Jessie did not know which one spoke. She never had been able to distinguish between them. But by this time she should have been pretty well acquainted with Henrietta Haney and her friends.

The Roselawn radio girls had become acquainted with this queer, little, half wild and wholly untaught child through certain odd circumstances related in detail in "The Radio Girls of Roselawn"; and Henrietta had proved to be both an amusing and a helpful child. She was particularly enamored of Jessie Norwood because of the latter's kindness to her, and because Jessie had aided in recovering the freedom of Henrietta's cousin, Bertha Blair, who had been restrained illegally so that she might not testify in an important court case in which Jessie's father was interested.

It was of Bertha Blair that the Roselawn girl now questioned little Henrietta.

"Did Bertha go to see that lady about a place, where she could have you with her, Henrietta?"

"She went once, but the woman was out. And when we went the second time, Billy Foley had burned a hole in my nice silk dress and my stockings got tored, and I looked a sight. So the lady says: 'Who's that awful little thing you've got with you, girl?' So we didn't get that job."

"Oh, dear, me! How unfortunate," sighed Jessie. "And Mrs. Curtis really wanted young people about her. The doctor said it would be the best thing in the world for her."

"Huh!" said the abrupt Henrietta. "She didn't want any raggedy kid like me. I was sorry about the taffeta silk, Miss Jessie."

"I am sorry, too, that you were not more careful," Jessie told her. "How did Billy come to burn the dress?"

Had Amy Drew heard that she would have screamed. But Jessie knew that the odd little Henrietta had no intention of being comical. The hole burned in the only silk dress she had ever owned was a tragedy to Henrietta's mind.

"Can't it be mended?" Jessie asked.

"I tried to. But I've only a piece of yellow silk and that don't match very well," sighed the child.

"I should say not!" gasped Jessie. "The taffeta is blue."

"And I can't sew small stitches," confessed Henrietta. "I try, but I bungle, Mrs. Foley says."

"Wouldn't Mrs. Foley mend the dress for you?"

"She would if she could find the time. But you know how it is yourself--with six kids, and all of 'em boys, and a man that drinks."

Jessie remembered to tell that to Amy the next morning when she ran over early to begin the radio repairs. Again the chums were in the overall suits that Mr. Stratford had joked about.

Men from Stratfordtown, with a big autotruck, had already arrived to remove the d?bris of the smashed plane. From under the d?bris Chapman and the gardener had rescued most of the radio antenna. But Jessie saw at once that the aerial would have to be entirely rearranged, and some new wire added.

"We will put it up differently this time, anyway," she said to Amy, but the latter asked, complainingly:

"Wasn't the other way good enough? I am sure we heard the concerts and other things from the broadcasting stations all right. Think how nicely it worked when the ladies of our church gave the bazaar here and you rigged the receiving set in the tent."

"I don't mean to change the rigging to aid in the distinctness of our receiving," said her more enthusiastic friend. "But you know Momsy has always been a little afraid of lightning striking the house because of the tangle of wires outside."

"He, he!" chuckled Amy. "Remember how the Stanley boys got into trouble rigging their set in that thunderstorm and we thought the minister's house was on fire?"

"I do. And wasn't it ridiculous?" Jessie observed. "But I read of a way to rig the antenna which will make a positive 'lightning break,' and I want to look it up in the magazine and see if I can use the idea."

"But," proclaimed Amy, who objected to any additional work, "if you are always careful to close the switch at the set there is never any danger from lightning."

"But Momsy will feel happier if I do this. She said so last night," and Jessie nodded a determined head. "There!" She heard her mother calling. "I wonder what she wants?"

"I hope she wants two George Washington sundaes brought from the Dainties Shop," declared Amy, eagerly, following her friend toward the house.

"And would you go for them in this costume?" laughed Jessie.

"We-ell, I'm fond of sundaes," confessed the impish Amy.

"You don't mean, Momsy, that Mark is not so well?" Jessie interrupted.

"No. It is not that. Mark is hard to keep in bed this morning, Mr. Theron says. But he misses his watch--that beautiful diamond-set hunting-case watch that you have seen him wear."

"Momsy!" cried Jessie. "That handsome watch that his grandmother gave Mark when he returned from France?"

"But surely, Mrs. Norwood, it was not lost inside the house--when they took off his clothes to put him to bed, for instance?" Amy said wonderingly.

"Quite true. We know he must have dropped it when the plane landed. But it might have been flung fifty feet away when the machine came down with such a crash."

"Oh, Momsy!" exclaimed Jessie. "Or it might be buried in the dirt of the rose garden where the plane landed. I'm going to look. Come on, Amy!" and Jessie ran down the veranda steps again.

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