"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.



BELLE RINGOLD

THE GLORIOUS FOURTH

THE BAZAAR



CHAPTER XI

BELLE RINGOLD

Whether Jessie Norwood actually "had it," as she proclaimed, or not, she kept very quiet about her discovery of what she believed to be a brand new idea. She did not tell Amy, even, or Momsy. That would have been against the rules of the contest.

She wrote out her suggestion for the prize idea, sealed it in an envelope, and dropped it through the slit in the locked box in the parish house, placed there for that purpose. It was not long to wait until the next evening but one.

She rode down to the church in Momsy's car, an electric runabout, and waited outside the committee room door with some of the other girls and not a few of the boys of the parish, for there had been a prize offered, too, for the boy who made the best suggestion.

"I am sure they are going to use my idea," Belle Ringold said, with a toss of her bobbed curls.

Did we introduce you to Belle? By this speech you may know she was a very confident person, not easily persuaded that her own way was not always best. She not only had her hair bobbed in the approved manner of that season, but her mother was ill-advised enough to allow her to wear long, dangling earrings, and she favored a manner of walking (when she did not forget) that Burd Alling called "the serpentine slink." Belle thought she was wholly grown up.

"They couldn't throw out my idea," repeated Belle.

"What is it, Belle, honey?" asked one of her chums.

"She can't tell," put in Amy, who was present. "That is one of the rules."

"Pooh!" scoffed Belle. "Guess I'll tell if I want to. That won't invalidate my chances. They will be only too glad to use my idea."

"Dear me," drawled Amy, laughing. "You're just as sure as sure, aren't you?"

Miss Seymour, the girls' English teacher in school, came to the door of the committee room with a paper in her hand. A semblance of order immediately fell upon the company.

"We have just now decided upon the two suggestions of all those placed in the box, the two prize ideas. And both are very good, I must say. Chippendale Truro! Is Chip here?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Chip, who was a snub-nosed boy whose chums declared "all his brains were in his head."

"Chip, I think your idea is very good. You will be interested to learn what it is, girls. Chip suggests that all the waitresses and saleswomen at the lawn party wear masks—little black masks as one does at a masquerade party. That will make them stand out from the guests. And the committee are pleased with the idea. Chip gets the tennis racket in Mr. Brill's show-window."

"Cricky, Chip! how did you come to think of that?" demanded one of the boys in an undertone.

"Well, they are going to be regular road-agents, aren't they?" asked the snub-nosed boy. "They take everything you have in your pockets at those fairs. They ought to wear masks—and carry guns, too. Only I didn't dare suggest the guns."

Amid the muffled explosion of laughter following this statement, Miss Seymour began speaking again:

"The girl's prize—the sports coat at Letterblair's—goes to Jessie Norwood, on whose father's lawn the bazaar is to be held on the afternoon and evening of the Fourth of July."

At this announcement Belle Ringold actually cried out: "What's that?"

"Hush!" commanded Miss Seymour. "Jessie has suggested that a tent be erected—her father has one stored in his garage—and that her radio set be placed in the tent and re-connected. With an amplifier the concerts broadcasted from several stations can be heard inside the tent, and we will charge admission to the tent. Radio is a new and novel form of amusement and, the committee thinks, will attract a large patronage. The coat is yours, Jessie."

"Well, isn't that the meanest thing!" ejaculated Belle Ringold.

"Did I hear you say something, Belle?" demanded Miss Seymour, in her very sternest way.

"Well, I want to say——"

"Don't say it," advised the teacher. "The decisions upon the prize ideas are arbitrary. The committee is responsible for its acts, and must decide upon all such matters. The affair is closed," and she went back into the committee room and closed the door.

"Well, isn't she the mean thing!" exclaimed one of those girls who liked to stand well with Belle Ringold.

"I am sure your idea was as good as good could be, Belle," Jessie said. "Only I happened to have the radio set, and—and everything is rigged right for my idea to work out."

"Oh, I can see that it was rigged right," snapped Belle. "Your mother is on the committee, and the lawn party is going to be at your house. Oh, yes! No favoritism shown, of course."

"Oh, cat's foot!" exclaimed Amy, linking her arm in Jessie's. "Let her splutter, Jess. We'll go to the Dainties Shop and have a George Washington sundae."

"I am afraid Belle is going to be very unpleasant about this thing," sighed Jessie, as she and her chum came out of the parish house.

"As usual," commented Amy. "Why should we care?"

"I hate to have unpleasant things happen."

"Think of the new coat," laughed Amy. "And I do think you were awfully smart to think of using your radio in that way. Lots of people, do you know, don't believe it can be so. They think it is make-believe."

"How can they, when wireless telegraphy has been known so long?"

"But, after all, this is something different," Amy said. "Hearing voices right out of the air! Well, you know, Jess, I said before, I thought it was sort of spooky."

"Ha, ha!" giggled her chum. "All the spooks you know anything about personally are blacksnakes. Don't forget that."

"And how brave that little Hen was," sighed Amy, as they sat down to the round glass table in the Dainties Shop. "I never saw such a child."

"I was trying to get daddy interested in her and in her lost cousin—if that was her cousin whom we saw carried off," Jessie returned. "Come to think of it, I didn't get very far with my story. I must talk to daddy again. But Momsy says he is much troubled over a case he has on his hands, an important case, and I suppose he hasn't time for our small affairs."

"I imagine that girl who was kidnaped doesn't think hers is a small affair," observed Amy Drew, dipping her spoon into the rich concoction that had been placed before her. "Oh, yum, yum! Isn't this good, Jess?"

"Scrumptious. By the way, who is going to pay for it?"

"Oh, my! Haven't you any money?" demanded Amy.

"We-ell, you suggested this treat."

"But you should stand it. You won the prize coat," giggled Amy.

"I never saw the like of you!" exclaimed Jessie. "And you say I am not fit to carry money, and all. Have you actually got me in here without being able to pay for this cream?"

"But haven't you any money?" cried Amy.

"Not one cent. I shall have to hurry back to the parish house and beg some of Momsy."

"And leave me here?" demanded Amy. "Never!"

"How will you fix it, then?" asked Jessie, who was really disturbed and could not enjoy her sundae.

"Oh, don't let that nice treat go to waste, Jess."

"It does not taste nice to me if we can't pay for it."

"Don't be foolish. Leave it to me," said Amy, getting on her feet. "I'll speak to the clerk. He's nice looking and wears his hair slicked back like patent leather. Lo-o-vely hair."

"Amy Drew! Behave!"

"I am. I am behaving right up, I tell you. I am sure I can make that clerk chalk the amount down until we come in again."

"I would be shamed to death," Jessie declared, her face flushing almost angrily, for sometimes Amy did try her. "I will not hear of your doing that. You sit down here and wait till I run back to the church——"

"Oh, you won't have to," interrupted Amy. "Here come some of the girls. We can borrow——"

But the girl who headed the little group just then entering the door of the Dainties Shop was Belle Ringold. The three who followed Belle were her particular friends. Jessie did not feel that she wanted to borrow money of Belle or her friends.



CHAPTER XII

THE GLORIOUS FOURTH

"Never mind," whispered Amy Drew quickly, quite understanding her chum's feelings regarding Belle and her group. "I'll ask them. It's my fault, anyway. And I only meant it for a joke——"

"A pretty poor joke, Amy," Jessie said, with some sharpness. "And I don't want you to borrow of them. I'll run back to the church."

She started to leave the Dainties Shop. Sally Moon, who was just behind Belle Ringold, halted Jessie with a firm grasp on her sleeve.

"Don't run away just because we came in, Jess," she said.

"I'm coming right back," Jessie Norwood explained. "Don't keep me."

"Where you going, Jess?" drawled another of the group.

"I've got to run back to the church to speak to mother for a moment."

"Your mother's not there," broke in Belle. "She was leaving in her flivver when we came away. The committee's broken up and the parish house door is locked."

"Oh, no!" murmured Jessie, a good deal appalled.

"Don't I tell you yes?" snapped Belle. "Don't you believe me?"

"Of course I believe what you say, Belle," Jessie rejoined politely. "I only said 'Oh, no!' because I was startled."

"What scared you?" demanded Belle, curiously.

"Why, I—I'm not scared——"

"It is none of your business, Belle Ringold," put in Amy. "Don't annoy her. Here, Jessie, I'll——"

The clerk who waited on them had come to the table and placed a punched ticket for the sundaes on it. He evidently expected to be paid by the two girls. The other four were noisily grouping themselves about another table. Belle Ringold said:

"Give Nick your orders, girls. This is on me. I want a banana royal, Nick. Hurry up."

The young fellow with the "patent leather" hair still lingered by the table where Jessie and Amy had sat. Belle turned around to stare at the two guilty-looking chums. She sneered.

"What's the matter with you and Jess, Amy Drew? Were you trying to slip out without paying Nick? I shouldn't wonder!"

"Oh!" gasped Jessie, flushing and then paling.

But Amy burst out laughing. It was a fact that Amy Drew often saw humor where her chum could not spy anything in the least laughable. With the clerk waiting and these four girls, more than a little unfriendly, ready to make unkind remarks if they but knew the truth——

What should she do? Jessie looked around wildly. Amy clung to a chair and laughed, and laughed. Her chum desired greatly to have the floor of the New Melford Dainties Shop open at her feet and swallow her!

"What's the matter with you, Amy Drew? You crazy?" demanded Belle.

"I—I——" Amy could get no farther. She weaved back and forth, utterly hysterical.

"If you young ladies will pay me, please," stammered the clerk, wondering. "I'd like to wait on these other customers."

"I want my banana royal, Nick," cried Belle.

The other three girls gave their orders. The clerk looked from the laughing Amy to the trembling Jessie. He was about to reiterate his demand for payment.

And just then Heaven sent an angel! Two, in very truth! At least, so it seemed to Jessie Norwood.

"Darry!" she almost squealed. "And Burd Alling! We—we thought you were at Atlantic Highlands."

The two young fellows came hurrying into the shop. They had evidently seen the girls from outside. Darry grabbed his sister and sat her down at a table. He grinned widely, bowing to Belle and her crowd.

"Come on, Jessie!" he commanded. "No matter how many George Washington sundaes you kids have eaten——"

"'Kids'! Indeed! I like that!" exploded Amy.

But her brother swept on, ignoring her objection: "No matter how many you have eaten, there is always room for one more. You and Amy, Jessie, must have another sundae on me."

"Darry!" exclaimed Jessie Norwood. "I thought you and Burd went to his aunt's."

"And we came back. That is an awful place. There's an uncle, too—a second crop uncle. And both uncle and auntie are vegetarians, or something. Maybe it's their religion. Anyway, they eat like horses—oats, and barley, and chopped straw. We were there for two meals. Shall we ever catch up on our regular rations, Burd?"

"I've my doubts," said his friend. "Say, Nick, bring me a plate of the fillingest thing there is on your bill of fare."

"In just a minute," replied the clerk, hopping around the other table to have Belle Ringold and her friends repeat their orders.

Belle had immediately begun preening when Darry and Burd came in. That the two college youths were so much older, and that they merely considered Amy and Jessie "kids," made no difference to Belle. She really thought that she was quite grown up and that college men should be interested in her.

"We had just finished, boys," Jessie managed to say in a low tone. "We had not even paid for our sundaes."

Darry and Burd just then caught sight of the punched check lying on the table and they both reached for it. There was some little rivalry over who should pay the score, but Darry won.

"Leave it to me," he said cheerfully. "Girls shouldn't be trusted with money anyway."

"Oh! Oh!" gurgled Amy, choked with laughter again.

"What's the matter with you, Sis?" demanded her brother.

Jessie forbade her chum to tell, by a hard stare and a determined shake of her head. It was all right to have Darry pay the check—it was really a relief—but it did not seem to Jessie as though she could endure having the matter made an open joke of.

The four settled about the little table. But the Ringold crowd was too near. Belle turned sideways in her chair, even before they were served, and, being at Darry's elbow, insisted upon talking to him.

"Talk about my aunt!" said Burd Alling, grinning. "I'll tell the world that somebody has a crush on Sir Galahad that's as plain to be seen as a wart on the nose of Venus."

"Of all the metaphors!" exclaimed Amy.

Jessie feared that Belle would overhear the comments of Burd and her chum, and she hurried the eating of her second sundae.

"I must get home, Darry," she explained. "Momsy has gone without me in her car and will be surprised not to find me there."

"Sure," agreed Burd quickly. "We'll gobble and hobble. Can't you tear yourself away, Darry?" he added, with a wicked grin.

Amy's brother tried politely to turn away from Belle. But the latter caught him by the coat sleeve and held on while she chattered like a magpie to the young college man. She smiled and shook her bobbed curls and altogether acted in a rather ridiculous way.

Darry looked foolish, then annoyed. His sister was in an ecstasy of delight. She enjoyed her big brother's annoyance. She and Jessie and Burd had finished their cream.

"Come on, Darry," Burd drawled, taking a hint from the girls. "Sorry you are off your feed and can't finish George Washington's finest product. I'll eat it for you, if you say so, and then we'll beat it."

He reached casually for Darry's plate; but the latter would not yield it without a struggle. The incident, however, gave Darry a chance to break away from the insistent Belle. The latter stared at the two girls at Darry's table, sniffed, and tossed her head.

"Yes, Mr. Drew," she said in her high-pitched voice, "I suppose you have to take the children home in good season, or they would be chastised."

"Ouch!" exclaimed Burd. "I bet that hurt you, Amy."

Darry had picked up both checks from the table. Belle smiled up at him and moved her check to the edge of her table as Darry rather grimly bade her good-night. He refused to see that check, but strode over to the desk to pay the others.

"That girl ought to get a job at a broadcasting station," growled out Darry, as they went out upon the street. "I never knew before she was such a chatterbox. Don't need any radio rigging at all where she is."

"Oh, wouldn't it be fun to get a chance to work at a broadcasting station?" Amy cried. "We could sing, Jess. You know we sing well together. 'The Dartmoor Boy' and 'Bobolink, Bobolink, Spink-spank-spink' and——"

"And 'My Old Kentucky Blues,'" broke in Burd Alling. "If you are going to broadcast anything like that, give us something up to date."

"You hush," Amy said. "If Jess and I ever get the chance we shall be an honor to the program. You'll see."

That the two young fellows had returned so much earlier than had been expected was a very fortunate thing, Jessie and Amy thought. For their assistance was positively needed in the work of making ready for the Fourth of July bazaar on the Norwood place, they declared.

There were only three days in which to do everything. "And believe me," groaned Burd before the first day was ended, "we're doing everything. Talk about being in training for the scrub team!"

"It will do you good, Burdie," cooed Amy, knowing that the diminutive of Burd Alling's name would fret him. "You are getting awfully plump, you know you are."

"I feel it peeling off," he grumbled. "Don't fear. No fellow will ever get too fat around you two girls. Never were two such young Simon Legrees before since the world began!"

But the four accomplished wonders. Of course the committee and their assistants and some of the other young people came to help with the decorations. But the two girls and Amy's older brother and his friend set up the marquees and strung the Japanese lanterns, in each of which was a tiny electric light.

"No candle-power fire-traps for us," Jessie said. "And then, candles are always blowing out."

About all the relaxation they had during the time until the eve of the Fourth was in Jessie's room, listening to the radio concerts. Mr. Norwood brought out from the city a two-step amplifier and a horn and they were attached to the instrument.

The third of the month, with the help of the men servants on the Norwood place, the tent for the radio concert was set up between the house and the driveway, and chairs were brought from the parish house to seat a hundred people. It was a good tent, and there were hangings which had been used in some church entertainment in the past to help make it sound proof.

They strung through it a few electric bulbs, which would give light enough. And the lead wire from the aerials, well grounded, was brought directly in from overhead and connected with the radio set.

"I hope that people will patronize the tent generously," Jessie said. "We can give a show every hour while the crowd is here."

"What are you going to charge for admission?" Amy asked.

"Momsy says we ought to get a quarter. But ten cents——"

"Ten cents for children, grown folks a quarter," suggested Amy. "The kids will keep coming back, but the grown folks will come only once."

"That is an idea," agreed Jessie. "But what bothers me is the fact that there are only concerts at certain times. We ought to begin giving the shows early in the afternoon. Of course, the radio is just as wonderful when it brings weather reports and agricultural prices as when Toscanini sings or Volburg plays the violin," and she laughed. "But——"

"I've got it!" cried her chum, with sudden animation. "Give lectures."

"What! You, Amy Drew, suggesting such a horrid thing? And who will give the lecture?"

"Oh, this is a different sort of lecture. Tell a little story about the radio, what has already been done with it, and what is expected of it in the future. I believe you could do it nicely, Jess. That sort of lecture I would stand for myself."

"I suppose somebody has got to attend to the radio and talk about it. I had not thought of that," agreed Jessie. "I'll see what the committee say. But me lecture? I never did think of doing that!" she proclaimed, in no little anxiety.



CHAPTER XIII

THE BAZAAR

When she had talked it over with Momsy and Miss Seymour, however, Jessie Norwood took up the thought of the radio lecture quite seriously. Somebody must explain and manage the entertainment in the radio tent, and who better than Jessie?

"It is quite wonderful how much you young people have learned about radio—so much more than I had any idea," said the school teacher. "Of course you can write a little prose essay, Jessie, get it by heart, and repeat it at each session in the tent, if you feel timid about giving an off-hand talk on the subject."

"You can do it if you only think you can, Jessie," said her mother, smiling. "I am sure I have a very smart daughter."

"Oh, now, Momsy! If they should laugh at me——"

"Don't give them a chance to laugh, dear. Make your talk so interesting and informative that they can't laugh."

Thus encouraged, Jessie spent all the forenoon of the Fourth shut up in her own room making ready for the afternoon and evening. She had already made a careful schedule of the broadcasting done by all the stations within reach of her fine radio set, and found that it was possible, by tuning her instrument to the wave lengths of different stations, to get something interesting into every hour from two o'clock on until eleven.

Naturally, some of the entertainments would be more interesting or amusing than others; but as New Melford people for the most part were as yet unfamiliar with radio, almost anything out of the air would seem curious and entertaining.

"Besides," Burd Alling said in comment on this, "for a good cause we are all ready and willing to be bunkoed a little."

"Let me tell you, Mr. Smarty," said Amy, "that Jessie's lecture is well worth the price of admission alone. Never mind the radio entertainment."

"I'll come to hear it every time," agreed Burd. "You can't scare me!"

The radio had been carefully tried out in the tent the evening before. The boys had got the market reports and the early baseball scores out of the air on Fourth of July morning, before the bazaar opened. When Jessie came out after luncheon to take charge of the radio tent, she felt that she was letter perfect in the "talk" she had arranged to introduce each session of the wireless entertainment.

No admission was charged to the Norwood grounds; but several of the older boys had been instructed to keep an oversight of the entire place that careless and possibly rough youngsters should do no harm. The Norwoods', like the Drews' was one of the show places of the Roselawn section of New Melford. Boys and girls might do considerable harm around the place if they were not under discipline.

The girls and boys belonging to the congregation of Dr. Stanley's church were on hand as flower sellers, booth attendants, and waitresses. Ice-creams and sherbets were served from the garage; sandwiches and cake from the house kitchen, where Mrs. Norwood's cook herself presided proudly over the goodies.

In several booths were orangeade, lemonade, and other soft drinks. The fancy costumes and the funny masks the girls and boys wore certainly were "fetching." That the masks were the result of a joke on Chip Truro's part made them none the less effective.

Amy was flying about, as busy as a bee. Darry and Burd were at the head of the "police." Miss Seymour took tickets for the radio tent, and after the first entertainment, beginning at two o'clock, she complimented Jessie warmly on the success of her talk on radio with which the girl introduced the show.

The lawns of the Norwood place began to be crowded before two o'clock. Cars were parked for several blocks in both directions. Special policemen had been sent out from town to patrol the vicinity. Dr. Stanley's smile, as he walked about welcoming the guests, expanded to an almost unbelievable breadth.

The noisy and explosive Fourth as it used to be is now scarcely known. Our forefathers did not realize that freedom could be celebrated without guns and firecrackers and the more or less smelly and dangerous burning of powder.

"Now," stated Burd Alling pompously, "we celebrate the name of the Father of his Country with a dish of fruit ice-cream. How are the mighty fallen! A George Washington sundae, please, with plenty of 'sundae' on it. Thank you!"

Then he gave up twice the price that he would have had to pay at the Dainties Shop down town for the same concoction to the young lady in the Columbine skirt and the mask.

"Young Truro had it right," grumbled Darry. "It's a hold-up."

"But you know you like to be robbed for a good cause," chuckled Amy, who chanced to hear these comments. "And remember that Doctor Stanley is going to get his share out of this."

"Right-o," agreed Burd. "The doctor is all right."

"But we ought to pony up the money for his support like good sports," said Darry, continuing to growl.

"You'd better ask him about that," cried Amy. "Do you know what the dear doctor says? He is glad, he says, to know that so many people who never would by any chance come to hear him preach give something to the support of the church. They are in touch with the church and with him on an occasion like this, when by no other means could they be made to interest themselves in our church save to look at the clock face in the tower as they go past."

"Guess he's right there," said Burd. "I reckon there are some men on the boulevard whose only religious act is to set their watches by the church clock as they ride by to town in their automobiles."

However and whatever (to quote Amy again), the intentions were that brought the crowd, the Norwood place was comfortably filled. The goodies were bought, the sale of fancy goods added much to the treasury, and a bigger thing than any other source of income was the admission to the radio shows.

The children were not the most interested part of the audience in the tent. From two o'clock until closing time Jessie Norwood presided at eight shows. She sometimes faced almost the same audience twice. Not only did some of the children pay their way in more than once, but grown people did the same. Curiosity regarding radio science was rife.

Doctor Stanley came more than once himself to listen. And the minister's boys wanted to take the radio set all apart between shows to "see how it went."

"I bet we could build one our own selves," declared Bob Stanley.

"I betcha!" agreed Fred.

"Only, it will cost a lot of money," groaned the minister's oldest son.

"You can do it for about ten dollars—if you are ingenious," said Jessie encouragingly.

"Gee whiz! That's a lot of money," said Fred.

The girl knew better than to suggest lending them or giving them the money. But she told them all the helpful things she could about setting up the radio paraphernalia and rigging the wires.

"I guess Nell would help us," Bob remarked. "She's pretty good, you know, for a girl."

"I like that!" exclaimed Jessie.

Bob Stanley grinned at her impishly.

In the evening when the electric lights were ablaze the Norwood lawns were a pretty sight indeed. People came in cars from miles away. It was surprising how many came, it seemed, for the purpose of listening to the radio. That feature had been well advertised, and it came at a time when the popular curiosity was afire through reading so much about radio in the newspapers.

Among the hundreds of cars parked near by were those of several of the more prosperous farmers of the county. One ancient, baldheaded, bewhiskered agriculturist sat through three of the radio shows, and commented freely upon this new wonder of the world.

"The telegraph was just in its infancy when I was born," he told Jessie. "And then came the telephone, and these here automobiles, and flying machines, and wireless telegraph, and now this. Why, ma'am, this radio beats the world! It does, plumb, for sure!"

The surprise and the comments of the audience did not so much interest Jessie Norwood as the fact that the money taken in by the tent show would add vastly to the profit of the bazaar.

"You sure have beaten any other individual concession on the lot," Amy told her at the end of the evening. "You know, Belle Ringold bragged that she was going to take in the most money at the orangeade stand, because it was a hot night. But wait till we count up! I am sure you have beaten her with the radio tent, Jess."



JEALOUSY

CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?



CHAPTER XIV

JEALOUSY

Jessie Norwood had not much personal desire to "beat" either Belle Ringold or any other worker for the bazaar; but she confessed to a hope that the radio show had helped largely to make up the deficit in church income for which the bazaar had been intended.

Miss Seymour had added up after each show the amount taken in at the door of the tent. Before the lights were put out and the booths were dismantled she was ready to announce to the committee the sum total of the radio tent's earnings.

"Goody! That will beat Belle, sure as you live," Amy cried when she heard it, and dragged Jessie away across the lawn to hear the report of the sum taken from the cash-drawer under the orangeade counter. Groups of young people milled around the "concession" which served the delicious cooling drinks.

"Walk right up, ladies and gentlemen—and anybody else that's with you—and buy the last of the chilled nectar served by these masked goddesses. In other words, buy us out so we can all go home." It was Darry Drew up on a stool ballyhooing for the soft drink booth.

"Did you ever?" gasped the young collegian's sister. "He is helping that Belle Ringold. I am amazed at Darry!"

"He is helping the church society," said Jessie, composedly.

But she could easily believe that Belle had deliberately entangled Darry in this thing. He never would have chosen to help Belle in closing out her supply of orangeade.

There she stood behind her counter, scarcely helping wait on the trade herself, but aided by three of her most intimate girl friends. Belle gave her attention to Darry Drew. She seemed to consider it necessary to steady him upon the stool while he acted as "barker."

"Come away, do!" sniffed Amy to Jessie. "That brother of mine is as weak as water. Any girl, if she wants to, can wind him right around her finger."

But Jessie did not wholly believe that. She knew Darry's character pretty well, perhaps better than Amy did. He would be altogether too easy-going to refuse to help Belle, especially in a good cause. Belle Ringold was very shrewd, young as she was, in the arts of gaining and holding the attention of young men.

But Darry saw his sister coming and knew that Amy disapproved. He flushed and jumped down from the stool.

"Oh, Mr. Drew! Darrington!" cried Belle, languishingly, "you won't leave us?" Then she, too, saw Amy and Jessie approaching. "Oh, well," Belle sneered, "if the children need you, I suppose you have to go."

Burd, who stood by, developed a spasm of laughter when he saw Amy's expression of countenance, but Jessie got her chum away before there came any further explosion.

"Never you mind!" muttered Amy. "I know you've got her beaten with your radio show. You see!"

It proved to be true—this prophecy of Amy's. The committee, adding up the intake of the various booths, reported that the radio tent had been by far the most profitable of any of the various money-making schemes. By that time the booths were entirely dismantled and almost everybody had gone home.

Belle and her friends had lingered on the Norwood veranda, however, to hear the report. It seemed that Belle had not achieved all that she had desired, although with the restaurant department, her stand had won a splendid profit. Of course, the money taken in at the radio tent was almost all profit.

"She just thought of that wireless thing so as to make the rest of us look cheap," Belle was heard to say to her friends. "Isn't that always the way when we come up here to the Norwoods'? Jess skims the cream of everything. I'll never break my back working for a church entertainment again if the Norwoods have anything to do with it!"

Unfortunately Jessie heard this. It really spoiled the satisfaction she had taken in the fact that her idea, and her radio set, had made much money for a good cause. She stole away from her chum and the other young people and went rather tearfully to bed.

Of course, she should not have minded so keenly the foolish talk of an impertinent and unkind girl. But she could not help wondering if other people felt as Belle said she felt about the Norwoods. Jessie had really thought that she and Daddy and Momsy were very popular people, and she had innocently congratulated herself upon that fact.

The morning brought to Jessie Norwood more contentment. When Momsy told her how the ladies of the bazaar committee had praised Jessie's thoughtfulness and ingenuity in supplying the radio entertainment, she forgot Belle Ringold's jealousy and went cheerfully to work to help clear up the grounds and the house. Her radio set was moved back to her room and she restrung the wires and connected up the receiver without help from anybody.

When Mr. Norwood came home that evening both she and Momsy noticed at once that he was grave and apparently much troubled. Perhaps, if their thought had not been given so entirely to the bazaar during the last few days, the lawyer's wife and daughter would before this have noticed his worriment of mind.

"Is it that Ellison case, Robert?" Mrs. Norwood asked, at the dinner table.

"It is the bane of my existence," declared the lawyer, with exasperation. "Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the apportionment of the property of the deceased Mr. Ellison must be decided by verbal rather than written evidence, the story those women tell—and stick to—bears weight with the Surrogate."

"Your clients are likely to lose their share, then?" his wife asked.

"Unless we can get at the truth. I fear that neither of those women knows what the truth means. Ha! If we could find the one witness, the one who was present when the old man dictated his will at the last! Well!"

"Can't you find her?" asked Momsy, who had, it seemed, known something about the puzzling case before.

"Not a trace. The old man, Abel Ellison, died suddenly in Martha Poole's house. She and the other woman are cousins and were distantly related to Ellison. He had a shock or a stroke, or something, while he was calling on Mrs. Poole. It did not affect his brain at all. The physicians are sure of that. Their testimony is clear.

"But neither of them heard what the old man said to the lawyer that Mrs. Poole sent for. McCracken is a scaly practitioner. He has been bought over, body and soul, by the two women. You see, they are a sporty crowd—race track habitues, and all that. The other woman—her name is Bothwell—has driven automobiles in races. She is a regular speed fiend, they tell me.

"Anyhow, they are all of a kind, the two women and McCracken. As Ellison had never made a will that anybody knows of, and this affidavit regarding his dictated wishes is the only instrument brought into court, the Surrogate is inclined to give the thing weight.

"Here comes in our missing witness, a young girl who worked for Mrs. Poole. She was examined by my chief clerk and admitted she heard all that was said in the room where Ellison died. Her testimony diametrically opposes several items which McCracken has written into the unsigned testament of the deceased.

"You see what we are up against when I tell you that the young girl has disappeared. Martha Poole says she has run away and that she does not know where she went to. The girl seems to have no relatives or friends. But I have my doubts about her having run away. I think she has been hidden away in some place by the two women or by the lawyer."

"Oh, Daddy!" exclaimed Jessie, who had been listening with interest. "That is just like the girl I tried to tell you about the other night—little Henrietta's cousin. She was carried off by two women in an automobile. What do you think, Daddy? Could Bertha be the girl you are looking for?"



CHAPTER XV

CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?

"What is this?" Mr. Norwood asked, staring at his eager daughter. "Have I heard anything before about a girl being carried away?"

"Why, don't you remember, Daddy, about Henrietta who lives over in Dogtown, and her cousin, Bertha, and how Bertha has disappeared, and—and——"

"And Henrietta is the champion snake killer of all this region?" chuckled Mr. Norwood. "I certainly have a vivid remembrance of the snakes, at any rate."

"Dear me!" cried Momsy. "This is all new to me. Where are the snakes, Jessie?"

"Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go," rejoined her husband. "Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that you wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before you were through that you quite forgot the snakes—I mean forgot the girl you say was run away with."

"Don't joke her any more, Robert," advised Momsy. "I can see she is in earnest."

"You just listen here, Daddy Norwood," Jessie cried. "Perhaps you'll be glad to hear about Bertha. She is little Henrietta Haney's cousin, and Henrietta expected Bertha to come to see her where she lives with the Foleys in Dogtown.

"Well, the day that Bertha was expected, she didn't come. That was the day Amy and I first thought of building our radio. And when we were walking into town we heard a girl screaming in Dogtown Lane. So we ran in, and there was this girl being pulled into an automobile by two women."

"What girl was this?" asked Mr. Norwood, quite in earnest now. "A girl you and Amy knew?"

"We had never seen her before, Daddy. And I am not positive, of course, that she was Bertha, Henrietta's cousin. But Amy and I thought it might be. And now you tell about two women who want to keep a servant girl away from you, and it might be the same."

"It might indeed," admitted Mr. Norwood thoughtfully. "Tell me what the two women looked like. Describe them as well as you can."

Jessie did so. She managed, even after this length of time, to remember many peculiarities about the woman who drove the big car and the fleshy one who had treated the girl so roughly. Mr. Norwood exclaimed at last:

"I should not be at all surprised if that were Martha Poole and Mrs. Bothwell. The descriptions in a general way fit them. And if it is so, the girl Jessie and Amy saw abused in that way is surely the maid who worked for Mrs. Poole."

"Oh, Robert! can it be possible, do you think?" cried his wife.

"Not alone possible, but probable," declared Robert Norwood. "Jessie, I am glad that you are so observant. I want you to get the little girl from Dogtown some day soon and let me talk with her. Perhaps she can tell me something about her cousin's looks that will clinch the matter. At least, she can tell us her cousin's full name, I have no doubt."

"It's Bertha for a first name," said Jessie, eagerly. "And I supposed it was Haney, like Henrietta's."

"The girl I am looking for is not named Haney, whatever her first name may be. Anyway, it is a chance, and I mean to get to the bottom of this mysterious kidnaping if I can, Jessie. Let me see this little Henrietta who kills snakes with such admirable vigor," and he laughed.

It was, however, no inconsiderable matter, as Jessie well understood. In the morning she hurried over to the Drew house to tell Amy about it. Both had been interested from the very beginning in the mystery of the strange girl and her two women captors. There was something wrong with those women. Amy said this with a serious shake of her head. You could tell!

And when, on further discussion, Jessie remembered their names—Poole and Bothwell—this fact brought out another discovery.

"Bothwell! I never did!" ejaculated Amy Drew. "Why, no wonder I thought she looked like somebody I knew. And she drives a fast car—I'll say she does. Jess Norwood! where were our wits? Don't you remember reading about Sadie Bothwell, whose husband was one of the first automobile builders, and she has driven in professional races, and won a prize—a cup, or something? And her picture was in the paper."

"That is the person Daddy refers to," Jessie agreed. "I did not like her at all."

"Ho! I should say not!" scoffed Amy. "And I wasn't in love with the fat woman. So she is a race track follower, is she?" Then Amy giggled. "I guess she wouldn't follow 'em far afoot! She isn't so lively in moving about."

"But where do you suppose they took Bertha—if it was Henrietta's cousin we saw carried off?"

"Now, dear child, I am neither a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter nor——"

"Nor one of the Seven Sleepers," laughed Jessie. "So you cannot prophesy, can you? We will go down to Dogtown this afternoon and see if Mrs. Foley will let us bring Henrietta back to see Daddy."

"The child hasn't been up to see you at all, has she?" asked Amy.

"Why, no."

"Maybe the woman won't want her to come. Afraid somebody may take little Hen away from her. Did you see the child's hands? They have been well used to hard work. I have an idea she is a regular little slave."

"Oh, I hope not. It doesn't seem to me as though anybody could treat that child cruelly. And she doesn't seem to blame Mrs. Foley for her condition."

"Well, Hen knows how to kill snakes, but maybe she is a poor judge of character," laughed Amy. "I'll go with you and defend you if the Foley tribe attack in force. But let's go down in the canoe. Then we can steal the cheeld, if necessary. 'Once aboard the lugger!' you know, 'and the gal is mine'."

"To hear you, one would think you were a real pirate," scoffed Jessie.

At lunch time Nell Stanley had an errand in the neighborhood, and she dropped in at the Drew house. The three girls, Mrs. Drew being away, had a gay little meal together, waited on by the Drew butler, McTavish, who was a very grave and solemn man.

"Almost ecclesiastic, I'll say," chuckled Nell, when the old serving man was out of the room. "He is a lot more ministerial looking than the Reverend. I expect him, almost any time, to say grace before meat. Fred convulsed us all at the table last evening. We take turns, you know, giving thanks. And at dinner last evening it was the Reverend's turn.

"'Say, Papa,' Fred asked afterward—he's such a solemn little tike you have no idea what's coming—'Say, Papa, why is it you say a so-much longer prayer than I do?'

"'Because you're not old enough to say a long one,' Reverend told him.

"'Oh!' said Master Freddie, 'I thought maybe it was 'cause I wasn't big enough to be as wicked as you and I didn't need so long a one.' Now! What can you do with a young one like that?" she added, as the girls went off into a gale of laughter.

But she had other news of her young brothers besides this. Bob and Fred were enamored of the radio. They were ingenious lads. Nell said she believed they could rig a radio set with a hair-pin and a mouse-trap. But she was going to help them obtain a fairly good set; only, because of the shortage of funds at the parsonage, Bob and Fred would be obliged themselves to make every part that was possible.

So she drew from Jessie and from Amy all they knew about the new science, and Jessie ran across to her house and got the books she had bought dealing with radio and the installation of a set.

Jessie and Amy got into their outing clothes when Nell Stanley had gone and embarked upon the lake, paddling to the landing at despised Dogtown. It was not a savory place in appearance, even from the water-side. As the canoe drew near the girls saw a wild mob of children, both boys and girls, racing toward the broken landing.

"Why! What are they ever doing?" asked Jessie, in amazement, backing with her paddle.

"Chasing that young one ahead," said Amy.

They were all dressed most fantastically, and the child running in advance, an agile and bedrabbled looking little creature, was more in masquerade than the others. She wore an old poke bonnet and carried a crooked stick, and there seemed to be a hump upon her back.

"Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake! Miss Spotted Snake!" the girls from Roselawn heard the children shrieking, and without doubt this opprobrious epithet referred to the one pursued.



SPOTTED SNAKE, THE WITCH

BROADCASTING



CHAPTER XVI

SPOTTED SNAKE, THE WITCH

"What are they trying to do to that poor child?" repeated Jessie Norwood, as the crowd swept down to the shore.

"Spotted snake! Spotted Snake!" yelled the crowd, and spread out to keep the pursued from running back. The hump-backed little figure with poke-bonnet and cane was chased out upon the broken landing.

"She will go overboard!" shrieked Jessie, and drove in her paddle again to reach the wharf. Amy, who was in the bow sheered off, but brought the side of the canoe skillfully against the rough planks.

"What are they doing to you, child?" Amy cried.

"Goin' to drown the witch! Goin' to drown the witch!" shrieked the rabble in the rear. "Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake!"

"It's little Henrietta!" screamed Jessie suddenly. "Oh, Amy!"

Amy, who was strong and quick, reached over the gunwale of the canoe and seized upon the crooked figure. She bore it inboard, knocking off the old bonnet to reveal Henrietta's freckled little face. The cloak and the hump under it were likewise torn off and went sailing away on the current.

"For pity's sake, Henrietta!" gasped Jessie.

"Yes'm," said the child composedly. "Did you come to see me?"

"Not expecting to see you in this—this shape," hesitated Jessie.

Amy went off into a gale of laughter. She could not speak for a minute. Jessie demanded:

"Who are those awful children, Henrietta?"

"Part Foleys, some McGuires, two Swansons, the Costeklo twins, and Montmorency Shannon," was the literal reply.

"What were they trying to do to you?"

"Drown me," said Henrietta composedly. "But they ain't ever done it yet. I always manage to get away. I'm cute, I am. But once they most nearly burned me, and Mrs. Foley stopped that. So now they mostly try to drown the witch."

"'The witch'?" murmured the amazed Jessie.

"Yep. That's me. Spotted Snake, the witch. That's cause I'm so freckled. It's a great game."

"I should say it was," marveled Jessie, and immediately Amy began to laugh again. "I don't see how you can, Amy," Jessie complained. "I think it is really terrible."

"I don't mind it," said Henrietta complacently. "It keeps 'em busy and out from under their mothers' feet."

"But they shriek and yell so."

"That don't hurt 'em. And there's plenty of outdoors here to yell in. Where we moved from in town, folks complained of the Foleys because they made so much noise. But nobody ever complains here in Dogtown."

As Amy said, when she could keep from laughing, it was a great introduction to Henrietta's home. They went ashore, and Henrietta, who seemed to have a good deal of influence with the children, ordered two of the boys to watch the canoe and allow nobody to touch it. Then she proudly led the way to one of the largest and certainly the most decrepit looking of all the hovels in Dogtown.

Mrs. Foley, however, was a cheerful disappointment. She was, as Amy whispered, a "bulgy" person, but her calico wrapper was fairly clean; and although she sat down and took up her youngest to rock to sleep while she talked (being too busy a woman to waste any time visiting) she impressed the girls from Roselawn rather favorably.

"That child is the best young one in the world," Mrs. Foley confessed, referring to "Spotted Snake, the Witch." "Sometimes I rant at her like a good one. But she saves me a good bit, and if ever a child earned her keep, Hen earns hers."

Jessie asked about the missing cousin, Bertha.

"Bertha Blair. Yes. A good and capable girl. Was out at service when Hen's mother died and left her to me. Something's wrong with Bertha, or she surely would have come here to see Hen before this."

"Did Bertha Blair work for a woman named Poole?" Jessie asked.

"That I couldn't tell you, Miss. But you take Hen up to see your father, like you say you want to. The child's as sharp as a steel knife. Maybe she'll think of something that will put him on the trace of Bertha."

So they bore Spotted Snake away with them in the canoe, while the Dogtown gang shrieked farewells from the old landing. Henrietta had been dressed in a clean slip and the smartest hair ribbon she owned. But she had no shoes and stockings, those being considered unnecessary at Dogtown.

"I believe Nell could help us find something better for this child to wear," Amy observed, with more thoughtfulness than she usually displayed. "What do you think, Jess? Folks are always giving the Stanleys half-worn clothes for little Sally, more than Sally can ever make use of. And Hen is just about Sally Stanley's size."

"That might be arranged," agreed Jessie. "I guess you'd like to have a new dress, wouldn't you, Henrietta?"

"Oh, my yes! I know just what I would like," sighed Henrietta, clasping her clawlike hands. "You've seen them cape-suits that's come into fashion this year, ain't you? That's what I'd like."

"My dear!" gasped Amy explosively.

"I don't mind going barefooted," said Henrietta. "But if I could just have one dress in style! I expect you two girls wear lots of stylish things when you ain't wearing sweaters and overall-pants like you did the other day. I never had anything stylish in my life."

Amy burst into delighted giggles, but Jessie said:

"The poor little thing! There is a lot in that. How should we like to wear nothing but second-hand clothes?"

"'Hand me downs'," giggled Amy. "But mind you! A cape-coat suit! Can you beat it?"

"I saw pictures of 'em in a fashion book Mrs. McGuire sent for," went on Henrietta. "They are awful taking."

Little Henrietta proved to be an interesting specimen for the Norwood family that evening. Momsy took her wonted interest in so appealing a child. The serving people were curious and attentive. Mr. Norwood confessed that he was much amused by the young visitor.

A big dictionary placed in an armchair, raised little Henrietta to the proper height at the Norwood dinner table. Nothing seemed to trouble or astonish the visitor, either about the food or the service. And Jessie and Momsy wondered at the really good manners the child displayed.

Mrs. Foley had not wholly neglected her duty in Henrietta's case. And there seemed to be, too, a natural refinement possessed by the girl that aided her through what would have seemed a trying experience.

Best of all, Henrietta could give a good description of her missing cousin. Her name was Bertha Blair, and that was the name of the girl Mr. Norwood's clerk had interviewed before she had been whisked away by Martha Poole and Sadie Bothwell.

In addition, Mr. Norwood had brought home photographs of the two women, and both Jessie and Amy identified them as the women they had seen in Dogtown Lane, forcing the strange girl into the automobile.

"It is a pretty clear case," the lawyer admitted. "We know the date and the place where the missing witness was. But the thing is now to trace the movements of those women and their prisoner after they drove away from Dogtown Lane."

Nevertheless, he considered that every discovery, even a small one, was important. Detectives would be started on the trail. Jessie and Amy rode back to Dogtown in the Norwoods' car with the excited Henrietta after dinner, leaving her at the Foleys' with the promise that they would see her soon again.

"And if those folks you know have any clothes to give me," said Henrietta, longingly, "I hope they'll be fashionable."



CHAPTER XVII

BROADCASTING

Darry and Burd were planning another trip on the Marigold, and so had little time to give to the girl chums of Roselawn. Burd wickedly declared that Darry Drew was running away from home to get rid of Belle Ringold.

"Wherever he goes down town, she pops up like a jack-in-the-box and tries to pin him. Darry is so polite he doesn't know how to get away. But I know he wishes her mother would lock her in the nursery."

"It is her mother's fault that Belle is such a silly," scoffed Amy. "She lets Belle think she is quite grown up."

"She'll never be grown up," growled out Darry. "Never saw such a kid. If you acted like her, Sis, I'd put you back into rompers and feed you lollipops."

"You'd have a big chance doing anything like that to me, Master Darry," declared his sister, smartly. "Even Dad—bless his heart!—would not undertake to turn back the clock on me."

Before the two young fellows left Roselawn again, they did the girls a favor that Amy and Jessie highly appreciated. It was done involuntarily but was nevertheless esteemed. Mark Stratford drifted up the Bonwit Boulevard in his big and shiny car and halted it in front of the Norwood place to hail Darry and Burd.

"Here's the millionaire kid," called out Alling. "Know him, girls? He's quite the fastest thing that lingers about old Yale. Zoomed over the German lines in the war, stoking an airplane, although at that time he was only a kid. Mark Stratford. His family are the Stratford Electric Company. Oodles of money. But Mark is a patient soul."

"'Patient'?" repeated Jessie, wonderingly, as she and Amy accompanied the young fellows down to the street.

"Sure," declared Burd. "Most fellows would be impatient, burdened with so much of the filthy lucre as Mark has. But not he. He is doing his little best to spend his share."

However, and in spite of Burd's introduction, Mark Stratford proved to be a very personable young man and did not look at all the "sport." Jessie considered that Burd was very probably fooling them about Mark. The young folks were talking like old friends in five minutes. In five minutes more they had piled into the car for a ride.

Mark's car "burned up the road" so fast that in half an hour they came to Stratfordtown where the huge plant of the Electric Company lay, and on the border of which was the large Stratford estate.

Jessie and Amy did not care anything about the beauties of the show place of the county. While riding over the girls had discussed one particular topic. And when Mark asked them where they wanted to go, or what they preferred to see, Jessie spoke out:

"Oh, Mr. Stratford! take us to the plant and let us go into the radio broadcasting room. Amy and I are just longing to see how it is done."

"Oh, that!" exclaimed Mark Stratford.

"We're crazy about radio, Mr. Stratford," agreed Amy.

"Some radio fiends, these two," said Darry. And he told his friend to what use the girls had already put Jessie's set for the benefit of the church bazaar.

"If you girls want to see how it's done, to be sure I'll introduce you to the man in charge. Wait till we drive around there." Stratford was as good as his word. It was a time in the afternoon when the Electric Company's matinee concert was being broadcasted. They went up in the passenger elevator in the main building of the plant to a sort of glassed-in roof garden. There were several rooms, or compartments, with glass partitions, sound-proof, and hung with curtains to cut off any echo. The young people could stare through the windows and see the performers in front of the broadcasting sets. The girls looked at each other and clung tightly to each other's hand.

"Oh, Amy!" sighed Jessie.

"If we could only get a chance to sing here!" whispered Amy in return.

It did not mean much to the boys. And Mark Stratford, of course, had been here time and time again. A gray-haired man with a bustling manner and wearing glasses came through the reception room and Mark stopped him.

"Oh, Mr. Blair!" the collegian said. "Here are some friends of mine who are regular radio bugs. Let me introduce you to Miss Jessie Norwood and Miss Amy Drew. Likewise," he added, as the gentleman smilingly shook hands with the girls, "allow me to present their comrades in crime, Darry Drew and Burdwell Alling. These fellows help me kill time over at Yale, to which the governor has sentenced me for four years."

"Mr. Blair?" repeated Jessie, looking sideways at her chum.

"Mr. Blair?" whispered Amy, who remembered the name as well as Jessie did.

"That is my name, young ladies," replied the superintendent, smiling.

"You don't know anything about a girl of our age named Blair, do you, Mr. Blair?" Jessie asked hesitatingly.

"I have no daughters," returned the superintendent, and the expression of his face changed so swiftly and so strangely that Jessie did not feel that she could make any further comment upon the thought that had stabbed her mind. After all, it seemed like sheer curiosity on her part to ask the man about his family.

"Just the same," she told Amy afterward, when they were in the automobile once more, "Blair is not such a common name, do you think?"

"But, of course, that Bertha Blair couldn't be anything to the superintendent of the broadcasting station. Oh, Jessie! What a wonderful program he had arranged for to-day. I am coming over to-night to listen in on that orchestral concert and hear Madame Elva sing. I would not miss it for anything."

"Suppose we could get a chance to help entertain!" Jessie sighed. "Not, of course, on the same program with such performers as these the Stratford people have. But——"

They happened to be traveling slowly and Mark overheard this. He twisted around in his seat to say:

"Why didn't you ask Blair about it? You have no idea how many amateurs offer their services. And some of them he uses."

"I'll say he does!" grumbled Burd. "Some of the singers and others I have listened in on have been punk."

"Well, I'll have you know that Jessie and I wouldn't sing if we could not sing well," Amy said, with spirit.

"Sure," agreed Burd, grinning. "Madame Elva wouldn't be a patch on you two girls singing the 'Morning Glories' Buns' or the 'Midnight Rolls'."

"Your taste in music is mighty poor, sure enough, Burd," commented Darry. "Jessie sings all right. She's got a voice like a——"

"Like a bird, I know," chuckled Alling. "That is just the way I sing—like a Burd."

"I've heard of a bird called a crow," put in Mark Stratford, smiling on the two girl chums. Jessie thought he had a really nice smile. "That is what your voice sounds like, Alling. You couldn't make the Glee Club in a hundred and forty years."

"Don't say a word!" cried Burd. "I'll be a long time past singing before the end of that term. Ah-ha! Here we are at Roselawn."

They got out at the Norwood place and the girls insisted upon Mark coming in to afternoon tea, which Amy and Jessie poured on the porch. The chums liked Mark Stratford and they did not believe that he was anywhere near as "sporty" as Burd had intimated. Naturally, a fellow who had driven a warplane and owned an airship now and often went up in it, would consider the driving of a motor-car rather tame. As for his college record, Jessie and Amy later discovered that Mark was a hard student and was at or near the head of his class in most of his studies.

"And he drives that wonderful car of his," said Amy, with approval, "like a jockey on the track."

The girl chums did not forget the concert they expected to enjoy that evening, but Darry and Burd left right after dinner for the moorings of the Marigold at City Island. They took Mark Stratford and some other college friends with them for a three days' trip on the yacht.

Jessie and Amy were eager to see the Marigold; but their parents had forbidden any mixed parties on the yacht until either Mr. and Mrs. Drew, or Mr. and Mrs. Norwood could accompany the young people. That would come later in the summer.

Amy ran over to the Norwood place before half past eight. The concert, Mr. Blair had told them, was to begin at nine. Jessie had learned a good deal about tuning in on the ether by this time; and there is no other part of radio knowledge more necessary if the operator would make full use of his set.

"The bedtime story is just concluded, Amy," Jessie said when her chum came in. "Sit down. I am going to get that talk on 'Hairpins and Haricots' by that extremely funny newspaper man—what is his name?"

"I don't know. What's in a name, anyhow?" answered her chum, lightly.

Amy adjusted the earphones while her friend manipulated the slides on the tuning coil. They did not catch the first of the talk, but they heard considerable of it. Then something happened—just what it was Amy had no idea. She tore off the ear-tabs and demanded:

"What are you doing, Jess? That doesn't sound like anything I ever heard before. Is it static interference?"

"It certainly is interference," admitted Jessie, trying to tune the set so as to get back upon the wave that had brought the funny talk about 'Hairpins and Haricots.'

But it did not work. Jessie could not get in touch with the lecture. Instead, out of the ether came one word, over and over again. And that word in a voice that Jessie was confident must come from a woman or a girl:

"Help! He-lp! He-e-lp!"

Over and over again it was repeated. Amy who had put on her head harness again, snatched at her chum's arm.

"Listen! Do you hear that?" she cried in an awed tone.



A MYSTERY OF THE ETHER



CHAPTER XVIII

A MYSTERY OF THE ETHER

Jessie knew that by carefully moving the slides on her tuning coil she could get into touch again with the talk to which she and Amy had been listening. But now the broadcasted cry for "Help!" seemed of so much importance that she wanted to hear more of this air mystery.

"He-lp!" The word came to their ears over and over again. Then: "I am a prisoner. They brought me here and locked me in. There is a red barn and silo and two fallen trees. He-lp! Come and find me!"

"For pity's sake, Jess Norwood!" shrilled Amy. "Do you hear that?"

"I'm trying to," her chum replied. "Hush!"

"It must be a hoax."

"Wait!"

They listened and heard it repeated, almost word for word. A red barn and a silo and two fallen trees. These points the strange voice insisted on with each repetition.

"I can't believe it!" declared Amy.

"It is a girl. I am sure it is a girl. Oh, Amy!" gasped Jessie. "Suppose it should be the girl whom we saw carried off by those two awful women?"

"Bertha Blair?"

"Yes. Of course, I suppose that is awfully far-fetched——"

"Wait! Here it comes again," whispered Amy.

"Come and find me! Help! I am a prisoner! The red barn and the silo with the two fallen trees."

How many times this was repeated the girls did not know. Suddenly something cluttered up the airways—some sort of interference—and the mystery of the ether died away. No matter what Jessie did to the tuning coil she could not bring that strangely broadcasted message back to their ears.

"What do you know about that?" demanded Amy, breathlessly.

"Why—why," murmured her chum, "we don't know much of anything about it. Only, I am sure that was a girl calling. It was a youthful voice."

"And I feel that it is Bertha Blair!" exclaimed Amy. "Oh, Jessie, we must do something for her."

"How can we? How can we find her?"

"A red barn with a silo and two fallen trees. Think of it! Did you ever see a place like that when you have been riding about the country?"

"I—nev-er—did!" and Jessie shook her head despondently.

"But there must be such a place. It surely is not a hoax," said Amy, although at first she had thought it was a joke. "And there is another thing to mark, Jess."

"What is that?"

"The place where this girl is kept a prisoner has a broadcasting station. You can't talk into a radio set like this. There has to be electric power and a generator, and all that—such as Mark Stratford showed us there at Stratfordtown."

"Of course."

"Then don't you think, Jessie, the fact that it is a broadcasting plant where the girl is imprisoned must narrow the inquiry a good deal?"

"How clever you are, dear," declared Jessie. "But a red barn with a silo and two fallen trees! Why, Amy! we don't know in which direction to look. Whether to the north, south, east or west!"

"No-o. I suppose——Oh, wait, Jess!" cried the excited Amy. "We don't really know where those women took that girl we saw carried off. They drove out the boulevard as far as we could see them. But, do you remember, we met that Mrs. Bothwell again in the big French car that very evening?"

"When we went to Parkville with Nell and the Brandons!" Jessie said eagerly. "I remember she passed us. You pointed her out to me."

"And she turned out of the very road we took to go to Parkville," said Amy, with confidence. "I believe that red barn with the silo must be over beyond Parkville."

"It might be so," admitted her chum, thoughtfully. "I have never been through that section of the state. But Chapman knows every road, I guess."

"Doesn't your father know the roads, too?"

"But Daddy and Momsy have gone to Aunt Ann's in New York and will not be back to-night," Jessie explained.

"Anyhow we couldn't go hunting around in the dark after this broadcasting station, wherever it is," Amy observed.

"Of course not," her chum agreed, taking the harness off her head. "Come down to the telephone and I'll see if Chapman is in the garage."

They ran downstairs, forgetting all about the radio concert they were to have heard, and Jessie called up the garage to which a private wire was strung.

The chauffeur, who had served the Norwoods ever since they had had a car, answered Jessie's request quickly, and appeared at the side door. Amy was just as eager as Jessie to cross-question the man about a red barn with a silo. He had to ask the girls to stop and begin all over again, and——

"If you please, Miss Jessie," he added, widely a-grin, "either let Miss Amy tell me or you tell me. I can't seem to get it right when you both talk."

"Oh, I am dumb!" announced Amy. "Go ahead, Jess; you tell him."

So Jessie tried to put the case as plainly as possible; but from the look on Chapman's face she knew that the chauffeur thought that this was rather a fantastic matter.

"Why, Chapman!" she cried, "you do not know much about this radio business, do you?"

"Only what I have seen of it here, Miss Jessie. I heard the music over your wires. But I did not suppose that anybody could talk into the thing and other folks could hear like——"

"Oh! You don't understand," Jessie interrupted. "No ordinary radio set broadcasts. It merely receives."

As clearly as she could she explained what sort of plant there must be from which the strange girl had sent out her cry for help.

"Of course, you understand, the girl must have got a chance on the sly to speak into the broadcasting horn. Now, all the big broadcasting stations are registered with the Government. And if secret ones are established the Government agents soon find them out.

"It might be, if the people who imprisoned this girl are the ones we think, they may have a plant for the sending out of information that is illegal. For instance, it might have some connection with race track gambling. One of the women is interested in racing and the other in automobile contests. If the broadcasting plant is near a race course or an autodrome——"

"Now you give me an idea, Miss Jessie!" exclaimed Chapman suddenly. "I remember a stock farm over behind Parkville where the barns are painted red. And there is a silo or two. Besides, it is near the Harrimay Race Course. I could drive over there in the morning, if you want to go. Mr. Norwood won't mind, I am sure."

"Would you go, Amy?" Jessie asked, hesitatingly.

"Sure! It's a chance. And I am awfully anxious now to find out what that mysterious voice means."



A PUZZLING CIRCUMSTANCE

SOMETHING DOING AT THE STANLEY'S



CHAPTER XIX

A PUZZLING CIRCUMSTANCE

Jessie's parents being away, Amy ran home and announced her desire to keep her chum company and was back again before ten o'clock. There was not much to be heard over the airways after that hour. They had missed Madame Elva and the orchestra music broadcasted from Stratfordtown.

"Nothing to do but to go to bed," Amy declared. "The sooner we are asleep the sooner we can get up and go looking for the mysterious broadcasting station. Do you believe that cry for help was from little Hen's cousin?"

"I have a feeling that it is," Jessie admitted.

"Maybe we ought to take Spotted Snake, the Witch, with us," chuckled her chum. "What do you say?"

"I think not, honey. We might only raise hopes in the child's mind that will not be fulfilled. I think she loves her cousin Bertha very much; and of course we do not know that this is that girl whose cry for help we heard."

"We don't really know anything about it. Maybe it is all a joke or a mistake."

"Do you think that girl sounded as though she were joking?" was Jessie's scornful reply. "Anyway, we will look into it alone first. If Chapman can find the stock farm with the red barn——"

"And there are two fallen trees and a silo near it," put in Amy, smiling. "Goodness me, Jess! I am afraid the boys would say we had another crazy notion."

"I like that!" cried Jessie Norwood. "What is there crazy about trying to help somebody who certainly must be in trouble? Besides," she added very sensibly, "Daddy Norwood will be very thankful to us if we should manage to find that Bertha Blair. He needs her to witness for his clients, and Momsy says the hearing before the Surrogate cannot be postponed again. The matter must soon be decided, and without Bertha Blair's testimony Daddy's clients may lose hundreds of thousands of dollars."

"We'll be off to the rescue of the prisoner in the morning, then," said Amy, cuddling down into one of her chum's twin beds. "Good-night! Sweet dreams! And if you have a nightmare don't expect me to get up and tie it to the bed-post."

The next morning Chapman brought around the car as early as half past eight, when the girls were just finishing breakfast.

"Don't eat any more, Amy," begged Jessie. "Do get up for once from the table feeling that you could eat more. The doctors say that is the proper way."

"Pooh! What do the doctors know about eating?" scoffed Amy. "Their job is to tend to you when you can't eat. Why? honey! I feel lots better morally with a full stomach than when I am hungry."

They climbed into the car and Chapman drove out the boulevard and turned into the Parkville road. It was a lovely morning, not too hot and with only a wind made by their passage, so that the dust only drifted behind the car. They passed the home of Mr. and Mrs. Brandon's daughter and saw the aerials strung between the house and the flagpole on the garage.

"Keep your eyes open for aerials anywhere, Amy," said Jessie. "Of course wherever that broadcasting station is, the aerials must be observable."

"They'll be longer and more important than the antenna for the usual receiving set, won't they?" eagerly asked Amy.

"Of course." Then Jessie leaned forward to speak to Chapman, for they were in the open car. "When you approach the stock farm you spoke of, please drive slowly. We want to look over all the surroundings."

"Very well, Miss Jessie," the chauffeur said.

Passing through Parkville, they struck a road called a turnpike, although there were no ticket-houses, as there are at the ferries. It was an old highway sweeping between great farms, and the country was rolling, partly wooded, and not so far off the railroad line that the latter did not touch the race-track Chapman had spoken of.

The car skirted the high fence of the Harrimay enclosure and then they ran past a long string of barns in which the racing horses were housed and trained for a part of the year. There was no meet here at this time, and consequently few horses were in evidence.

"I like to see horses race," remarked Amy. "And they are such lovely, intelligent looking creatures. But so many people who have anything to do with horses and racing are such hard-faced people and so—so impossible! Think of the looks of that Martha Poole. She's the limit, Jessie."

"Neither she nor Mrs. Bothwell is nice, I admit. But don't blame it on the poor horses," Jessie observed, smiling. "I am sure it is not their fault. Mrs. Poole would be objectionable if she was interested in cows—or—or Pekingese pups."

Chapman turned up a hilly road and they came out on a ridge overlooking the fenced-in track. The chauffeur shifted his position so as to glance behind him at the girls, the car running slowly.

"Now look out, Miss Jessie," he advised. "We are coming to the old Gandy stock farm. That's the roof of the house just ahead. Yonder is the tower they built to house the electric lighting plant like what your father used to have. See it?"

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Jessie. "But—but I don't see any aerials. No, I don't! And the red barn——"

"There it is!" cried Amy, grabbing at her chum's arm. "With the silo at the end."

The car turned a corner in the road and the entrance gate to the estate came into view. Up the well kept lane, beyond the rambling house of weathered shingles, stood a long, low barn and a silo, both of a dull red color. And on either side of the entrance gate were two broken willow trees, their tall tops partly removed, but most of the trunks still lying upon the ground where they had fallen.

"Ha!" ejaculated the chauffeur. "Those trees broke down since I was past here last."

"Do drive slower, Chapman," Jessie cried.

But she drew Amy down when the girl stood up to stare at the barn and the tower.

"There may be somebody on watch," Jessie hissed. "They will suspect us. And if it is either of those women, they will recognize you."

"Cat's foot!" ejaculated Amy. "I don't see any signs of occupancy about the house. Nor is there anybody working around the place. It looks abandoned."

"We don't know. If the poor girl is shut up here——"

"Where?" snapped Amy.

"Perhaps in the house."

"Perhaps in the barn," scoffed her chum. "Anyway, every window of that tower, both the lower and the upper stories, is shuttered on the outside."

"Maybe that is where Bertha is confined—if it is Bertha."

"But, honey! Where is the radio? There is nothing but a telephone wire in sight. There is no wireless plant here."

"Dear me, Amy! don't you suppose we have come to the right place?"

The car was now getting away from the Gandy premises. Jessie had to confess that there was no suspicious looking wiring anywhere about the house or outbuildings.

"It does not seem as though that could be the place after all. What do you think, Chapman?" she added, leaning forward again. "Don't you think that place looked deserted?"

"It often does between racing seasons, Miss Jessie," the man said. "Whoever owns it now does not occupy it all the year."

Suddenly Jessie sat up very straight and her face flamed again with excitement. She cried aloud:

"Chapman! Isn't there a village near? And a real estate office?"

"Harrimay is right over the hills, Miss Jessie," said the chauffeur.

"Drive there at once, please," said the girl. "And stop at the office of the first real estate agent whose sign you see."

"For goodness sake, Jess!" drawled Amy, her eyes twinkling, "you don't mean to buy the Gandy farm, do you?"



CHAPTER XX

SOMETHING DOING AT THE STANLEYS'

Chapman drove the automobile down into Harrimay only ten minutes later. It was a pretty but rather somnolent place, just a string of white-painted, green-blinded houses and two or three stores along both sides of an oiled highway. It was a long ten-minute jitney ride from the railway station.

"Perkins, Real Estate" faced the travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the eager Jessie hopped out.

"I'm coming, too! I'm coming, too!" squealed Amy, running across the walk after her.

"Do be quiet," begged her chum. "And for once let me do the talking."

"Oui, oui, Mademoiselle! As I haven't the least idea what the topic of the conversation will be, I can easily promise that," whispered Amy.

A high-collared man with eyeglasses and an ingratiating smile arose from behind a flat-topped desk facing the door and rubbed his hands as he addressed the two girls.

"What can I do for you, young ladies?"

"Why, why——Oh, I want to ask you—" Jessie stammered. "Do you know who owns the farm over there by the track? The Gandy place?"

"The old Gandy stock farm, Miss?" asked the real estate man with a distinct lowering of tone. "It is not in the market. The Gandy place never has been in the market."

"I just wish to know who owns it," repeated Jessie, while Amy stared.

"The Gandys still own it. At least old man Gandy's daughter is in possession I believe. Horse people, all of them. This woman——"

"Please tell me her name?"

"Poole, Martha Poole, is her name."

"Oh!" cried Amy, seeing now what Jessie wanted.

But Jessie shook her head at her chum warningly, and asked the man:

"Do you know if Mrs. Poole is at the place now?"

"Couldn't say. She comes and goes. She is always there when the racing is going on. It is supposed that some things that go on there at the Gandy place are not entirely regular," said the real estate man stiffly. "If you are a friend of Mrs. Poole——"

"I am Jessie Norwood. My father, Mr. Robert Norwood, is a lawyer, and we live in the Roselawn section of New Melford."

"Oh, ah, indeed!" murmured the real estate man. "Then I guess it is safe to tell you that the people around here do not approve of Mrs. Poole and what goes on at the Gandy place during the racing season. It is whispered that people there are interested in pool rooms in the city. You know, where betting on the races is conducted."

"I do not know anything about that," replied Jessie, in some excitement. "But I thank you for telling me about Martha Poole."

She seized Amy by the arm and hurried back to the automobile.

"What do you think of that?" gasped Amy, quite as much amazed as was her chum.

"I do wish Daddy was coming home to-day. But he isn't. Not until dinner time, anyway. I do believe, Amy Drew, that poor Bertha is hidden away somewhere at that farm."

"But—but——how could she get at any sending station to tell her troubles to—to the air?" and Amy suddenly giggled.

"Don't laugh. It is a very serious matter, I feel sure. If the poor girl actually isn't being abused, those women are hiding her away so that they can cheat Daddy's clients out of a lot of money."

"Again I ask," repeated Amy, more earnestly, "how could that girl, whoever she is, get to a sending station? We did not see the first sign of an aerial anywhere near that house and barn, or above the tower, either."

"I don't know what it means. It is a mystery," confessed Jessie. "But I just feel that what we heard over the radio had to do with that missing girl—that it was Bertha Blair calling for help, and that in some way she is connected with that red barn and the silo and the two fallen trees. We traced the place from her description."

"So we did!"

"And unless it is all a big hoax, somewhere near that place Bertha is held a prisoner. If that Martha Poole is in with some crooked people who break the state gambling law by radio, sending news of the races to city gambling rooms, she would commit other things against the law."

"Oh!" cried Amy. "Both she and that Mrs. Bothwell look like hard characters. But there were no aerials in sight!"

Jessie thought for a moment. Then she flashed at her chum:

"Well, that might be, too. Some people string their aerials indoors. I don't know if that can be done at a sending station. But it may be. They are inventing new things about radio all the time. You know that, dear."

"I know it," agreed Amy.

"And if that broadcasting station up there at the Gandy farm is used for the sending of private racing information, in all probability the people who set it up would want to keep it secret."

"I see! So they would."

"It is not registered, you can make up your mind. And as it is only used much when the racing season is on at the Harrimay track, the Government has probably given it little attention."

"Could they find it, do you think, Jessie?" asked her chum.

"I have read that the Government has wonderful means of locating any 'squeak-box', as they call it, that is not registered and which litters up the airways with either unimportant or absolutely evil communications. These methods of tracing unregistered sending stations were discovered during the war and were proved thoroughly before the Government allowed any small stations to be established since."

"Do you suppose the police knew that that woman was sending racing news to gambling rooms from up there at her farm?"

"We don't know that she is. Mr. Perkins was only repeating gossip. And we did not see aerials up there."

"But you say that maybe they could have rigging for the station without any aerials in the open?"

"It might be. I am all confused. There certainly is a mystery about it, and Daddy Norwood ought to know at once. Oh, Chapman! That was thunder. We must hurry home."

"Yes, Miss Jessie," said the chauffeur, looking up at the clouds that had been gathering. "I think I can get you home before it rains."

He increased the speed of the car. They had circled around by another way than the Parkville road, and they came through the edge of New Melford. When the automobile shot into Bonwit Boulevard and headed toward Roselawn the first flash of lightning made the girls jump.

Chapman stepped on the accelerator and the car shot up the oiled way. The thunder seemed to explode right overhead. Before the first peal rolled away there was another sharp flash. Although the rain still held off, the tempest was near.

"Oh!" gasped Jessie, covering her eyes.

"There's the church," said Amy. "We'll soon be home now."

Even as she spoke another crackling stroke burst overhead. The green glare of it almost blinded them. The thunder shook the air. Jessie screamed.

"See! See! Look at the parsonage!" she cried in Amy's ear.

"Why, the boys must have already strung their wires and got a radio set established," said Amy.

"Look at the window—that attic window!" Jessie exclaimed. "Don't you see what I see, Amy Drew?"

"It's smoke!" said the other girl, amazed.

"The house is afire! In the attic! That lightning must have struck there. It must have been led in by the wires, just as Momsy feared."

"Then the boys never closed their switch!" cried Amy. "Oh! I wonder if Doctor Stanley or Nell knows that the house is on fire?"



A GREAT TO-DO

SILK

DARRY'S BIG IDEA



CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT TO-DO

"Chapman! Stop!" shouted Jessie. "We must tell them!"

The chauffeur wheeled the car in toward the curb and stopped as quickly as he could. But it was some distance past the church and the parsonage.

The girls jumped out and ran back. They saw Dr. Stanley come out on the porch from his study. He was in his house gown and wore a little black cap to cover his bald spot. It was a little on one side and gave the good clergyman a decidedly rakish appearance.

"Come in here, children! Hurry! It is going to rain," he called in his full and mellow voice.

"Oh, Doctor! Doctor!" Jessie gasped. "The fire! The fire!"

"Why, you are not wet. Here come the first drops. You don't need a fire."

"Nor you don't need one, Doctor," and Amy began to laugh. "But you've got one just the same."

"In the kitchen stove. Is it a joke or a conundrum?" asked the smiling minister, as the two chums came up under the porch roof just as the first big drops came thudding down.

"Upstairs! The radio!" declared the earnest Jessie. "Don't you know it's afire?"

"The radio afire?"

"The lightning struck it. Didn't you feel and hear it? The boys must have left the switch to the receiver open, and the lightning came right in——"

"Come on!" broke in Amy, who knew the way about the parsonage as well as she did about her own house. "We saw the smoke pouring out of the window," and she darted in and started up the front stairway.

"Why, why!" gasped the good doctor. "I can hardly believe Nell would be so careless."

"Oh, it isn't Nell," Jessie said, following her chum. "It is the boys."

"But she always knows what the boys are up to, and Sally, too," declared the minister, confident of his capable daughter's oversight of the family.

The girls raced up the two flights. They smelled the smoke strongly as they mounted the second stairway to the garret. Then they heard voices.

"They've got it right in the old lumber room, Jess!" panted Amy.

"But why don't they give the alarm?"

"Trying to put it out themselves. We ought to have brought buckets!"

"There is no water on this floor!"

Amy banged open the door of the big room in which they knew, by the arrangement of the outside wires, Bob and Fred must have set up the radio set. Amy plunged in, with Jessie right behind her. The room was unpleasantly filled with smoke.

"Why don't you put it out?" shrieked Amy, and then began to cough.

"Hullo!" Bob Stanley exclaimed out of the smother. "We want to put it in, not out. Hullo, Jess. You here, too?"

"The fire! The smoke!" gasped Jessie.

"Shucks," said Fred, who was down on his knees poking at something. "We can't have the windows open, for the rain is beating this way. We've got to solder this thing. Did you have trouble with yours, Jess?"

"Sweetness and daylight!" groaned a voice behind them.

Dr. Stanley stood in the doorway. He was a heavy man, and mounting the stairs at such a pace tried his temper as well as his wind.

"Is this what started you girls off at such a tearing pace? Why, the boys borrowed that soldering outfit from the plumber. It's all right."

"I am so sorry we annoyed you," said Jessie, contritely.

But Amy had begun to laugh and could say nothing. Only waved her hands weakly and looked at the clergyman, whose cap was much more over his ear than before.

"Right in the middle of Sunday's sermon, young ladies," said the minister, with apparent sternness. "If that sermon is a failure, Amy and Jessie, I shall call on one of you girls—perhaps both of you—to step up into the pulpit and take my place. Remember that, now!" and he marched away in apparent dudgeon; but they heard him singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" before he got to the bottom of the upper flight of stairs.

"But it certainly was a great to-do," murmured Jessie, as she tried to see what the boys were doing.

She was able to advise them after a minute. But Amy insisted upon opening one of the windows and so getting more of the smoke out of the long room.

"You boys don't even know how to make a fire in a fire-pot without creating a disturbance," she said.

Nell came up from the kitchen where she had been consulting the cook about the meals, and Sally came tagging after her; of course, with a cookie in one hand and a rag doll in the other.

"This Sally is nothing but a yawning cavity walking on hollow stilts," declared Nell, who "fussed" good-naturedly, just as her father did. "She is constantly begging from the cook between meals, and her eyes are the biggest things about her when she comes to the table."

"Ain't," said Sally, shaking her curls in denial.

"Ain't what?" asked Jessie.

"Ain't—ain't if you please," declared the little girl, revealing the fact that her sister had tried to train her in politeness.

When the girls stopped laughing—and Sally had finished the cookie—Nell added:

"Aunt Freda came last night to dinner and we had strawberry fool. Cook makes a delicious one. And Sally could eat her weight of that delicacy. When I came to serve the dessert Sally was watching me with her eagle eye and her mouth watering. I spooned out an ordinary dishful, and Sally whispered: