Tony.”
Bill crawled out from under his automobile as the two girls who had been passengers walked away. He was just as much smutted as Belle said he would be. But he looked after her and her friend without betraying any dissatisfaction.
“It’s all right,” he said to Monty. “I guess you couldn’t help being in the way. This car does go wrong once in a while. You can jump in the car and I’ll take you home and tell the chap that owns the pony how it happened. He can come to my father and get paid.”
“Not much,” said the Dogtown boy. “I’ll have to lead the pony. But you can take Hen back to Dogtown.”
“Is it safe?” asked Jessie, for Henrietta had started for the red car at once. She was crazy about automobiles.
“If it goes bad again I can get out,” said the child importantly. “I won’t wait for it to turn topsy-turvy.”
“She will be all right,” said Bill Brewster gloomily. “Father will make me pay for this carriage out of my own money. I’m rather glad we are going where I can’t use the machine for the rest of the summer. It eats up all my pocket money.”
“Where are your folks going, Billy?” asked Jessie politely.
“Oh, we always go to Hackle Island.”
“Everybody is going to an island,” laughed Amy. “I guess we’ll have to accept Hen’s invitation and go to her island, Jess.”
“It’s a lot better island than that one those girls are going to,” repeated Henrietta, with confidence, climbing into the red car.
When the latter was gone, and Monty Shannon was out of sight, leading the brown and white pony, the three Roselawn girls discussed little Henrietta’s story of her sudden wealth, and particularly of her possession of Station Island, wherever that was.
“Of course, we won’t understand the rights of the matter till we see Bertha,” said Jessie. “She must know all about it.”
“I wonder where Station Island is situated?” Amy observed. “Let’s hunt an atlas – Oh, no, we won’t! Here is something better.”
“Something better than an atlas?” laughed Nell. “A walking geography?”
“You said it,” rejoined Amy. “Papa knows all about such things. I can’t even remember how New Melford is bounded; but you’d think he had been all around the world, and walked every step of the way.”
“And you never will know, Amy Drew, if you ask somebody every time you want to know anything and never stop to work the thing out yourself,” admonished Jessie.
“Oh, piffle!” exclaimed the careless Amy. “What’s the use?”
Mr. Drew was just coming out of his own grounds across the boulevard, and his daughter hailed him.
“Want to ask you an important question, papa,” cried Amy, running to meet him and hanging to his arm.
“Ahem! If you expect advice, I expect a retainer,” said the lawyer soberly.
“Nothing like that! I know you lawyers. I am going to wait to see if your advice is worth anything,” declared his gay daughter. “Now, listen! Did you ever hear of Station Island?”
“I have just heard of it,” responded the gentleman promptly.
“Oh! Don’t be so dreadfully smart,” said Amy. “I know I am telling you – ”
“Wrong. I had just heard of it to-day – before you mentioned it,” returned her father. “But I have known of it for a good many years, under another name.”
“Then you do know where Station Island is, Mr. Drew?” cried Jessie, eagerly. “We do so want to know.”
“That is the new name they have given the place since the big radio station was established there. It is really Hackle Island, girls, and has been known by that name since our great-grandparents’ days.”
CHAPTER IV – UNCERTAINTIES
“It is lucky Henrietta went away before papa came,” observed Amy, after they had discussed the strange matter at some length. “She certainly would have been mad to learn that Belle and Sally were likely to visit what she calls her island, without any invitation from her.”
“What do you suppose it all means?” asked Jessie.
“She must have heard some mixed-up account of an island that belonged to her family,” Nell said, “and got it twisted. I can’t see it any other way. But I must go home now, girls. The Reverend and the children need looking after by this time. Good-bye.”
Mr. Drew did not explain until evening about his previous knowledge of the island in question. Then he came over to smoke his after-dinner cigar on the Norwood’s porch, and he and Jessie’s father discussed the matter within the hearing of their two very much interested daughters. When their fathers did not object, Jessie and Amy often “listened in” on business conversations, and this one was certainly important to the minds of the two chums.
“Did Blair telephone you to-day again about that matter?” Mr. Norwood asked his neighbor.
“No. It was Mr. Stratford himself. Takes an interest in Blair’s affairs, you know.”
“It really concerns that Bertha Blair who was of so much value to me in the Ellison will case. You remember?” observed Mr. Norwood.
“And it concerns this little freckle-faced child the girls have had around here so much. Actually, if the thing pans out the way it looks, Norwood, that child has got something coming to her.”
“She has a good deal coming to her if she can prove she is the daughter of Padriac Haney,” said Jessie’s father, with vigor.
“You are inclined to take the matter up?”
“I am. I’ll do all I can. Blair has no money to risk – ”
“He won’t need any,” said Mr. Drew, quite as decisively. “If you can spend your time on it, so can I. It won’t break us, Norwood, to help the child.”
“Not at all,” agreed Mr. Norwood, generously.
“But is it really true, Daddy, that Hackle Island belongs to little Henrietta and Bertha?” asked Jessie.
“A good part of it, apparently. All of the middle of the island,” he returned. “The Government owns Sable Point where the old lighthouse stands and where the radio station is now established. That has been a government reservation for years. At the other end is the Hackle Island Hotel, always popular with a certain class of moneyed people.”
“I have been there,” said Mr. Drew, nodding. “But there is a bunch of bungalows in between – ”
“By the way,” interposed Mr. Norwood, “my wife said something about taking one of those for a month or two. I have the tentative offer of one.”
“O-oh!” gasped Amy, clasping her hands.
Her father laughed outright. “See,” he said to the other lawyer. “You are going to have a guest, if you go there. I can see that.”
“The bungalow is big enough for the girls and their friends,” admitted Jessie’s father.
“That beats the farm!” cried Amy to Jessie.
“It will be nice. And we can take Henrietta and Bertha along.”
“They are going in any case, I hear from Blair,” said Mr. Norwood briskly. “His wife will take them. There is an old farmhouse that belongs to the Haney estate. You see, a part of the bungalow colony and the Club golf course are included in the old Haney place. The real estate men who exploited the island a few years ago did not trouble themselves to get clear title to the land. They made their bit and got out. Now there are two parties laying claim to the middle of the island.”
“Oh, dear!” cried Jessie. “Then it isn’t sure that little Henrietta will get her island? Too bad!”
“Personally