The Campfire Girls of Roselawn: or, a Strange Message from the Air

The clerk laughed as he wrapped up the several books Jessie had charged to her father’s account. “You let me know how you get on building it, will you?” he said. “Maybe I can get some ideas from your experience.”

“We’ll show ’em!” declared Amy, all in a glow of excitement. “And why do you suppose, Jess, folks always have to suggest that girls can’t do what boys can? Isn’t it ridiculous!”

“Very,” agreed Jessie. “Although, just as I pointed out a while ago, it would have been handy if Darry or Burd had been with us when we saw that poor girl kidnaped.”

“Of course! But, then, those boys are college men.” She giggled. “And I wager Burd is a sea-sick college man just now.”

“Oh! Have they gone out in the Marigold?” cried Jessie.

“They left New Haven the minute they could get away and joined the yacht at Groton, over across from New London, where it has been tied up all winter. Father insisted that Darry shouldn’t touch the yacht, when Uncle Will died and left it to him last fall, until the college year was ended. We got a marconigram last night that they had passed Block Island going out. And now– well, Burd never was at sea before, you know,” and Amy laughed again.

“It has been rather windy. I suppose it must be rough out in the ocean. Oh, Amy!” Jess suddenly exclaimed, “if I get my radio rigged why can’t we communicate with the Marigold when it is at sea?”

“I don’t know just why you can’t. But I guess the wireless rigging on the yacht isn’t like this radio thing you are going to set up. They use some sort of telegraph alphabet.”

“I know,” declared Jessie with conviction. “I’ll tell Darry to put in a regular sending set – like the one I hope to have, if father will let me. And we can have our two sets tuned so that we can hear each other speak.”

“My goodness! You don’t mean it is as easy as all that?” cried Amy.

“Didn’t you read that magazine article?” demanded her chum. “And didn’t the man say that, pretty soon, we could carry receiving and sending sets in our pockets – maybe – and stop right on the street and send or receive any news we wanted to?”

“No, I sha’n’t,” declared Amy. “Pockets spoil the set of even a sports skirt. Where you going now?”

“In here. Mr. Brill sells electrical supplies as well as hardware. Oh! Amy Drew! There is a radio set in his window! I declare, New Melford is advancing in strides!”

“Sure! In seven league boots,” murmured Amy, following her friend into the store.

Jessie had noted down the things she thought it would be safe to order before speaking to her father about the radio matter. Mrs. Norwood had cheerfully given her consent. Amy had once said that if Jessie went to her mother and asked if she could have a pet plesiosaurus, Mrs. Norwood would say:

“Of course, you may, dear. But don’t bring it into the house when its feet are wet.”

For the antenna and lead-in and ground wires, Jessie purchased three hundred feet of copper wire, number fourteen. The lightning switch Mr. Brill had among his electric fixtures – merely a porcelain base, thirty ampere, single pole double throw battery switch. She also obtained the necessary porcelain insulators and tubes.

She knew there would be plenty of rope in the Norwood barn or the garage for their need in erecting the aerials. But she bought a small pulley as well as the ground connections which Mr. Brill had in stock. He was anxious to sell her a complete set like that he was exhibiting in the show window; but Jessie would not go any farther than to order the things enumerated and ask to have them sent over the next morning.

The girls hurried home when they had done this, for it was verging on dinner time and they did not want to miss going with Nell Stanley and the Brandons to Parkville for the radio entertainment. Mr. Norwood was at home, and Jessie flew at him a good deal like an eager Newfoundland puppy.

“It is the most wonderful thing!” she declared, as she had introduced the subject to her chum.

She kept up the radio talk all through dinner. She was so interested that for the time being she forgot all about the girl that had been carried away in the automobile. Mr. Norwood had not been much interested in the new science; but he promised to talk the matter over with Momsy after their daughter had gone to the radio concert.

“Anyhow,” said Jessie, “I’ve bought the books telling how to rig it. And we’re going to do it all ourselves – Amy and I. And Mr. Brill is going to send up some wire and things. Of course, if you won’t let me have it, I’ll just have to pay for the hardware out of my allowance.”

“Very well,” her father said with gravity. “Maybe Chapman can find some use for the hardware if we don’t decide to build a radio station.”

As they seldom forbade their daughter anything that was not positively harmful, however, there was not much danger that Jessie’s allowance would be depleted by paying a share of the monthly hardware bill. Anyhow, Jessie as well as Amy, went off very gayly in the Brandon car with the minister’s daughter. Mr. Brandon drove his own car, and the girls sat in the tonneau with Mrs. Brandon, who did not seem by any means a very old lady, even if she was a grandmother.

“But grandmothers nowadays aren’t crippled up with rheumatism and otherwise decrepit,” declared Amy, the gay. “You know, I think it is rather nice to be a grandmother these days. I am going to matriculate for the position just as soon as I can.”

They rolled out of town, and just as they turned off the boulevard to take another road to Parkville, a big car passed the Brandon automobile coming into town. It was being driven very rapidly, but very skillfully, and the car was empty save for the driver.

“What beautiful cars those French cars are,” Mrs. Brandon said.

“Did you see her, Jess?” cried Amy, excitedly. “Look at her go!”

“Do you speak of the car or the lady?” laughed Nell Stanley.

“She is no lady, I’d have you know,” Amy rejoined scornfully. “Didn’t you know her when she passed, Jess?”

“I thought it was the car,” her chum admitted. “Are you sure that was the woman who ran off with the girl?”

“One of them,” declared Amy, with confidence. “And how she can drive!”

Naturally Mrs. Brandon and Nell wished to know the particulars of the chums’ adventure. But none of them knew who the strange woman who drove the French car was.

“She is not at all nice, at any rate,” Jessie said emphatically. “I really wish there was some way of finding out about that girl they carried off, and what became of her.”

CHAPTER IV

STRINGING THE AERIALS

Parkville was reached within a short time. It was still early evening. The girls from Roselawn and their host and hostess found a number of neighbors already gathered in the drawing-room, to listen to the entertainments broadcasted from several radio stations.

They were too late for the bedtime story; but from the cabinet-grand, like an expensive talking machine, the slurring notes of a jazz orchestra greeted their ears as plainly as though it were coming from a neighboring room instead of a broadcasting station many miles away. Amy confessed that it made her feet itch. She loved to dance.

There was singing to follow, a really good quartette. Then a humorist told some of his own funny stories and an elocutionist recited a bit from Shakespeare effectively. The band played a popular air and the amused audience began singing the song. It was fine!

“I’m just as excited as I can be,” whispered Jessie to Nell and Amy. “Isn’t it better than our talking machine? Why! it is almost like hearing the real people right in the room. And an amplifier of this kind is not scratchy one bit.”

“There is no static to-night,” said Mr. Brandon, who overheard the enthusiastic girl. “But it is not always so clear.”

Jessie and Amy were too excited over this new amusement to heed anything that suggested “a fly in the ointment.” When they drove home they were so full of radio that they chattered like magpies.

“I would put up the aerials and get a set myself,” Nell declared, “only we don’t really need any more talking machines of any kind at our house. Dear me! I sometimes wonder how the Reverend can write his sermons, there is so much noise and talk all the time. I have tacked felt all around his study door to try to make it sound-proof. But when Bob comes in he bangs the outer door until you are reminded of the Black Tom explosion. And Fred never comes downstairs save on his stomach – and on the banisters – and lands on the doormat like a load of brick out of a dumpcart. Then Sally squeals so!” She sighed.

“Nell Stanley,” Amy said, “certainly has her own troubles.”

“I do not see how the doctor stands it,” commented Mrs. Brandon sympathetically.

“The Reverend is the greatest man in the world,” declared Nell, with conviction. “He is wonderful. He takes the most annoying things so composedly. Why, you remember when he went to Bridgeton a month ago to speak at the local Sunday School Union? Something awfully funny happened. It would have floored any man but the Reverend.”

“What happened?” asked Amy. “I bet it was a joke. Your father, Nell, always tells the most delightful stories.”

“This isn’t a story. It is so,” chuckled Nell. “But I suppose that was why they asked him to amuse and entertain the little folks at one session of the Union. Father talked for fifteen minutes, all about Jacob’s ladder, and those old stories. And not a kid of ’em went to sleep.

“He said he was proud to see them so wide awake, and when he was closing he thought he would find out if they really had been attentive. So he said:

“‘And now, is there any little boy or any little girl who would like to ask me a question?’

“And one boy called out: ‘Say, Mister, if the angels had wings why did they walk up and down Jacob’s ladder?’”

“Mercy!” ejaculated Mrs. Brandon. “What could he say?”

“That is it. You can’t catch the Reverend,” laughed Nell, proudly. “And nothing ever confuses him or puts him out. He just said:

“‘Oh, ah, yes, I see. And now, is there any little boy or any little girl who would like to answer that question?’ And he bowed and slipped out.”

The laughter over this incident brought them into Roselawn, where Jessie and Amy got out, after thanking the kindly Brandons for the evening’s pleasure. Nell lived a little further along, and went on with Mr. and Mrs. Brandon.

“If I can find the time,” called Nell Stanley, as the car started again, “I am coming over to see how you rig your aerials, Jessie.”

“If I am allowed to,” commented Jessie, with a sudden fear that perhaps her father would find some objection to the new amusement.

But this small fear was immediately dissipated when she ran in after bidding Amy good-night. She found her father and mother both in the library. The package of radio books had been opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Norwood was each reading interestedly one of the pamphlets Jessie had chosen at the bookshop.

The three spent an hour discussing the new “plaything,” as Mr. Norwood insisted upon calling it. But he agreed to everything his daughter wanted to do, and even promised to buy Jessie a better receiving set than Brill, the hardware man, was carrying.

“As far as I can see, however, from what I read here,” said Mr. Norwood, “a better set will make no difference in your plans for stringing the aerials. You and Amy can go right ahead.”

“Oh, but, Robert,” said Mrs. Norwood, “do you think the two girls can do that work?”

“Why not? Of course Jessie and Amy can. If they need any help they can ask one of the men – the chauffeur or the gardener, or somebody.”

“We are going to do it all ourselves!” cried Jessie, eagerly. “This is going to be our very owniest own radio. You’ll see. We’ll put the set upstairs in my room.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have it downstairs – in the drawing-room, for instance?” asked her mother.

“I know you, Momsy. You’ll be showing it off to all your friends. And pretty soon it will be the family radio instead of mine.”

Mr. Norwood laughed. “I read here that the ordinary aerials will do very well for a small instrument or a large. It is suggested, too, that patents are pending that may make outside aerials unnecessary, anyway. Don’t you mind, Momsy. If we find we want a nice, big set for our drawing-room, we’ll have it in spite of Jessie. And we’ll use her aerials, too.”

The next day Brill sent up the things Jessie had purchased, but the girls could not begin the actual stringing of the copper wires until the morning following. Ample study of the directions for the work printed in the books Jessie had selected made the chums confident that they knew just what to do.

The windows of Jessie’s room on the second floor of the Norwood house were not much more than seventy-five feet from the corner of an ornamental tower that housed the private electric plant belonging to the place. It was a tank tower, and water and light had been furnished to the entire premises from this tower before the city plants had extended their service out Bonwit Boulevard and through Roselawn.

Jessie’s room had been the nursery when Jessie was little. It was now a lovely, comfortable apartment, decorated in pearl gray and pink, with willow furniture and cushions covered with lovely cretonne, an open fireplace in which real logs could be burned in the winter, and pictures of the girl’s own selection.

Her books were here. And all her personal possessions, including tennis rackets, riding whip and spurs, canoe paddle, and even a bag of golf sticks, were arranged in “Jessie’s room.” Out of it opened her bedroom and bath. It was a big room, too, and if the radio was successful they could entertain twenty guests here if they wanted to.

“But, of course, father is getting a set with phones, not with an amplifier like that one out at Parkville,” Jessie explained to her chum. “If we want to use a horn afterward, we may. Now, Amy, do you understand what there is to do?”

“Sure. We’ve got to get out our farmerette costumes. You know, those we used in the school gardens two years ago.”

“Oh, fine! I never would have thought of that,” crowed Jessie.

“Leave it to your Aunt Amy. She’s the wise old bird,” declared Amy. “I always did like those overalls. If I climb a ladder I don’t want any skirt to bother me. If the ladder begins to slip I want a chance to slide down like a man. Do the ‘Fireman, save my cheeld’ act.”

“You are as lucid as usual,” confessed her chum. Then she went on to explain: “I have found rope enough in the barn for our purpose – new rope. We will attach the end of the aerial wires with the rope to the roof of the old tower. It will enable us to make the far end of the aerials higher than my window – you see?”

“Necessary point; I observe. Go ahead, Miss Seymour.”

“Please don’t call me ‘Miss Seymour,’” objected Jessie, frowning. “For the poor thing has a wart on her nose.”

“No use at all there. Not even as a collar-button,” declared Amy. “All right; you are not Miss Seymour. And, come to think of it, I wonder if it was Miss Seymour I was thinking of last night when I thought that woman driving the kidnappers’ car looked like somebody I knew? Do you think–?”

“Oh! That horrid woman! I don’t dislike Miss Seymour, you know, Amy, even if she does teach English. I think she is almost handsome beside that motor-car driver. Yes, I do.”

“Wart and all?” murmured Amy.

But they were both too deeply interested in the radio to linger long on other matters. They laid out the work for the next morning, but did nothing practical toward erecting the wires and attendant parts that day. Amy came over immediately after breakfast, dressed in her farmerette costume, which was, in truth, a very practical suit in which to work.

The girls even refused the help of the gardener. He said they would be unable to raise the heavy ladder to the tower window; and that was a fact.

“All right,” said the practical Jessie, “then we won’t use the ladder.”

“My! I am not tall enough to reach the things up to you from the ground, Jess,” drawled Amy.

“Silly!” laughed her friend. “I am going up there to the top window in the tower. I can stand on the window sill and drive in the hook, and hang the aerial from there. See! We’ve got it all fixed on the ground here. I’ll haul it up with another rope. You stay down here and tie it on. You’ll see.”

“Well, don’t fall,” advised Amy. “The ground is hard.”

It had been no easy matter for the two girls to construct their aerial. The wire persisted in getting twisted and they had all they could do to keep it from kinking. Then, too, they wanted to fasten the porcelain insulators just right and had to consult one of the books several times. Then there came more trouble over the lead-in wire, which should have been soldered to the aerial but was only twisted tight instead.

The girls worked all the forenoon. When one end of the aerial was attached properly to the tower, Amy ran in and upstairs to her chum’s room and dropped a length of rope from one of the windows. Jessie came down from her perch and attached the house-end of the aerial to the rope. When Amy had the latter hauled up and fastened to a hook driven into the outside frame of Jessie’s window, the antenna was complete.

At that (and it sounds easy, but isn’t) they got it twisted and had to lower the house-end of the aerial again. While they were thus engaged, a taxi-cab stopped out in front. Amy, leaning from her chum’s window, almost fell out in her sudden excitement.

“Oh, Jess! They’ve come!” she shouted.

“What do you mean?” demanded Jessie. “We were not expecting anybody, were we?”

“You weren’t, but I was. I forgot to tell you,” cried Amy. “They just went around Long Island and came up the East River and through Hell Gate and got a mooring at the Yacht Club, off City Island.”

“Who are you talking about?” gasped her chum, wonderingly.

“Darry–”

“Darry!” ejaculated Jessie with mixed emotions. She glanced down at her overalls. She was old enough to want to look her best when Darrington Drew was on the scene. “Darry!” she murmured again.

“Yes. And Burd Alling. They telephoned early this morning. But I forgot. Here they come, Jess!”

Jessie Norwood turned rather slowly to look. She felt a strong desire to run into the house and make a quick change of costume.

CHAPTER V

THE FRECKLE-FACED GIRL

Of the two young fellows hurrying in from the boulevard one was tall and slim and dark; the other was stocky – almost plump, in fact – and sandy of complexion, with sharp, twinkling pond-blue eyes. Burdwell Alling’s eyes were truly the only handsome feature he possessed. But he had a wonderfully sweet disposition.

Darry Drew was one of those quiet, gentlemanly fellows, who seem rather too sober for their years. Yet he possessed humor enough, and there certainly was no primness about him. It was he who hailed Jessie on the ground and Amy leaning out of the window above:

“I say, fellows! Have you seen a couple of young ladies around here who have just finished their junior year at the New Melford High with flying colors? We expected to find them sitting high and dry on the front porch, ready to receive company.”

“Sure we did,” added Burd Alling. “They have taken the highest degree in Prunes and Prisms and have been commended by their instructors for excellent deportment. And among all the calicos, they are supposed to take the bun as prudes.”

Amy actually almost fell out of the window again, and stuck out her tongue like an impudent urchin. “A pair of smarties,” she scoffed. “Come home and fret our ears with your college slang. How dare you!”

“I declare! Is that Miss Amy Drew?” demanded Burd, sticking a half dollar in his eye like a monocle and apparently observing Amy for the first time.

“It is not,” said Amy sharply. “Brush by! I don’t speak to strange young men.”

But Darry had come to Jessie and shaken hands. If she flushed self-consciously, it only improved her looks.

“Awfully glad to see you, Jess,” the tall young fellow said.

“It’s nice to have you home again, Darry,” she returned.

Amy ran down again then, in her usual harum-scarum fashion, and the conversation became general. How had the girls finished their high-school year? And how had the boys managed to stay a whole year at Yale without being asked to leave for the good of the undergraduate body?

Was the Marigold a real yacht, or just a row-boat with a kicker behind? And what were the girls doing in their present fetching costumes?

“The wires!” cried Burd. “Is it a trapeze? Are we to have a summer circus in Roselawn?”

“We shall have if you remain around here,” was Amy’s saucy reply. “But yon is no trapeze, I’d have you know.”

“A slack wire? Who walks it – you or Jess?”

“Aw, Burd!” ejaculated Darry. “It’s radio. Don’t you recognize an aerial when you see it?”

“You have a fine ground connection,” scoffed Burd.

“Don’t you worry about us,” Jessie took heart to say. “We know just what to do. Go upstairs again, Amy, and haul up this end of the contraption. I’ve got it untwisted.”

A little later, when the aerial was secure and Jessie went practically to work affixing the ground connection, Darrington Drew said:

“Why, I believe you girls do know what you are about.”

“Don’t you suppose we girls know anything at all, Darry?” demanded his sister from overhead. “You boys have very little on us.”

“Don’t even want us to help you?” handsome Darry asked, grinning up at her.

“Not unless you approach the matter with the proper spirit,” Jessie put in. “No lofty, high-and-mighty way goes with us girls. We can be met only on a plane of equality. But if you want to,” she added, smiling, “you can go up to my room where Amy is and pull that rope tauter. I admit that your masculine muscles have their uses.”

They were still having a lot of fun out of the securing of the aerials when suddenly Burd Alling discovered a figure planted on the gravel behind him. He swept off his cap in an elaborate bow, and cried:

“We have company! Introduce me, Amy – Jess. This young lady–”

“Smarty!” croaked a hoarse voice. “I don’t want to be introducted to nobody. I want to know if you’ve seen Bertha.”

“Big Bertha?” began Burd, who was as much determined on joking as Amy herself.

But Jessie Norwood, her attention drawn to the freckle-faced child who stood there so composedly, motioned Burd to halt. She approached and in her usual kindly manner asked what the strange child wanted.

It really was difficult to look soberly at the little thing. She might have been twelve years old, but she was so slight and undernourished looking that it was hard to believe she had reached that age. She had no more color than putty. And her sharp little face was so bespatted with freckles that one could scarcely see what its real expression was.

“Bertha who?” Jessie asked quietly. “What Bertha are you looking for?”

“Cousin Bertha. She’s an orphan like me,” said the freckled little girl. “I ain’t got anybody that belongs to me but Bertha; and Bertha ain’t got anybody that belongs to her but me.”

Burd and Amy were still inclined to be amused. But Darry Drew took his cue from Jessie, if he did not find a sympathetic cord touched in his own nature by the child’s speech and her forlorn appearance.

For she was forlorn. She wore no denim uniform, such as Amy had mentioned on a previous occasion as being the mark of the usual “orphan.” But it was quite plain that the freckle-faced girl had nobody to care much for her, or about her.

“I wish you would explain a little more, dear,” said Jessie, kindly. “Why did you come here to ask for your Cousin Bertha?”

“’Cause I’m asking at every house along this street. I told Mrs. Foley I would, and she said I was a little fool,” and the child made the statement quite as a matter of course.

“Who is Mrs. Foley?”

“She’s the lady I help. When Mom died Mrs. Foley lived in the next tenement. She took me. She brought me out here to Dogtown when she moved.”

“Why,” breathed Amy, with a shudder, “she’s one of those awful Dogtown children.”

“Put a stopper on that, Amy!” exclaimed Darry, promptly.

But the freckle-faced girl heard her. She glared at the older girl – the girl so much better situated than herself. Her pale eyes snapped.

“You don’t haf to touch me,” she said sharply. “I won’t poison you.”