The Campfire Girls of Roselawn Part 21

"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 n.o.body 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 n.o.body 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+onable."

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.