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

“Oh, Amy!” murmured her chum.

But Amy Drew was not at all bad at heart, or intentionally unkind. She flamed redly and the tears sprang to her eyes.

“Oh! I didn’t mean – Forgive me, little girl! What is your name? I’ll help you find your cousin.”

“My name’s Henrietta. They call me Hen. You needn’t mind gushin’ over me. I know how you feel. I’d feel just the same if I wore your clo’es and you wore mine.”

“By ginger!” exclaimed Burd Alling, under his breath. “There is philosophy for you.”

But Jessie felt hurt that Amy should have spoken so thoughtlessly about the strange child. She took Henrietta’s grimy hand and led the freckled girl to the side steps where they could sit down.

“Now tell me about Bertha and why you are looking for her along Bonwit Boulevard,” said Jessie.

“Do you wear these pants all the time?” asked Henrietta, suddenly, smoothing Jessie’s overalls. “I believe I’d like to wear ’em, too. They are something like little Billy Foley’s rompers.”

“I don’t wear them all the time,” said Jessie, patiently. “But about Bertha?”

“She’s my cousin. She lived with us before Mom died. She went away to work. Something happened there where she worked. I guess I don’t know what it was. But Bertha wrote to me – I can read written letters,” added the child proudly. “Bertha said she was coming out to see me this week. And she didn’t come.”

“But why should you think–”

“Lemme tell you,” said Henrietta eagerly. “That woman that hired Bertha came to Foleys day before yesterday trying to find Bertha. She said Bertha’d run away from her. But Bertha had a right to run away. Didn’t she?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. Unless the woman had adopted her, or something,” confessed Jessie, rather puzzled.

“Bertha wasn’t no more adopted than I am. Mrs. Foley ain’t adopted me. I wouldn’t want to be a Foley. And if you are adopted you have to take the name of the folks you live with. So Bertha wasn’t adopted, and she had a right to run away. But she didn’t get to Dogtown.”

“But you think she might have come this way?”

“Yep. She’s never been to see me since we moved to Dogtown. So she maybe lost her way. Or she saw that woman and was scared. I’m looking to see if anybody seen her,” said the child, getting up briskly. “I guess you folks ain’t, has you?”

“I am afraid not,” said Jessie thoughtfully. “But we will be on the lookout for her, honey. You can come back again and ask me any time you like.”

The freckle-faced child looked her over curiously. “What do you say that for?” she demanded. “You don’t like me. I ain’t pretty. And you’re pretty – and that other girl,” (she said this rather grudgingly) “even if you do wear overalls.”

“Why! I want to help you,” said Jessie, somewhat startled by the strange girl’s downright way of speaking.

“You got a job for me up here?” asked Henrietta promptly. “I guess I’d rather work for you than for the Foleys.”

“Don’t the Foleys treat you kindly?” Amy ventured, really feeling an interest in the strange child.

“Guess she treats me as kind as a lady can when she’s got six kids and a man that drinks,” Henrietta said with weariness. “But I’d like to wear better clo’es. I wouldn’t mind even wearing them overall things while I worked if I had better to wear other times.”

She looked down at her faded gingham, the patched stockings, the broken shoes. She wore no hat. Really, she was a miserable-looking little thing, and the four more fortunate young people all considered this fact silently as Henrietta moved slowly away and went down the path to the street.

“Come and see me again, Henrietta!” Jessie called after her.

The freckled child nodded. But she did not look around. Darry said rather soberly:

“Too bad about the kid. We ought to do something for her.”

“To begin with, a good, soapy bath,” said his sister, vigorously, but not unkindly.

“She’s the limit,” chuckled Burd. “Hen is some bird, I’ll say!”

“I wonder–” began Jessie, but Amy broke in with:

“To think of her hunting up and down the boulevard for her cousin. And she didn’t even tell us what Bertha looked like or how old she is, or anything. My!”

“I wonder if we ought not to have asked her for more particulars,” murmured Jessie. “It is strange we should hear of another girl that had run away–”

But the others paid no attention at the moment to what Jessie was saying. It was plain that Amy did not at all comprehend what her chum considered. The lively one had forgotten altogether about the unknown girl she and Jessie had seen borne away in the big French car.

CHAPTER VI

SOMETHING COMING

That afternoon Mr. Norwood brought home the radio receiving set in the automobile. The two girls, with a very little help, but a plethora of suggestion from Darry and Burd, proceeded to establish the set on a table in Jessie’s room, and attach the lead-in wire and the ground wire.

Jessie had bought a galena crystal mounted, as that was more satisfactory, the book said. After all the parts of the radio set had been assembled and the connections made, the first essential operation, if they were to make use of the invention at once, was to adjust the tiny piece of wire – the “cat’s whisker” – which lightly rests on the crystal-detector, to a sensitive point.

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