The fleet of strange barges that Jessie had first spied included, it seemed, almost every sort of craft that could be improvised. A rainwater barrel led the procession of “boats,” and Montmorency Shannon was in that, paddling with some kind of paddle that he wielded with no little skill.
There were two wooden washtubs in which the Costello twins voyaged. One was much lower in the water than the other, giving evidence of having shipped more water than its mate. In a water-trough that had been filched from somebody’s barnyard was little Henrietta and Charlie Foley.
“They will be overboard!” exclaimed Jessie, anxiously. “Drive ahead, Amy – do!”
The wind was blowing directly in their faces and from the direction of the Dogtown landing, where the flotilla had evidently embarked. The tubs spun around and around, the half-barrel in which Monty Shannon sat tried to perform the same gyrations, but Henrietta and the Foley boy blundered ahead. It was plain to Jessie’s mind that the reckless children could not have sailed in the other direction had they wished to do so.
“What do you come out here for?” she shrieked when the canoe drew near.
“Oh, Miss Jessie, we are going to the Carter place,” sang out Henrietta.
“But the Carter place is down the lake, not up!” exclaimed the exasperated Jessie.
“Yes. But the wind shifted,” said Henrietta.
“Where is your big canoe?” demanded Amy, who could scarcely paddle from laughter, in spite of the evident danger the children were in.
“That is what we started after,” said Montmorency Shannon, his red head sticking out of the barrel like a full-blown hollyhock. “It got away in the night, or somebody let it go, and we saw it away down by the Carter place. So – so we thought we’d go after it.”
“And I warrant your mothers don’t know what you are doing,” Jessie said sternly.
“Oh, they will!” cried Henrietta, virtuously.
“When they miss the washtubs,” put in Amy, with laughter.
“When we tell ’em,” corrected little Henrietta. “And we always tell ’em everything we do.”
“I see. After it is all over,” Jessie commented.
“We-ell,” said Henrietta, pouting, “we can’t tell ’em what we have done before we do it, can we? For we never know ourselves.”
“You certainly cannot beat that for logic,” declared Amy. She drove the head of the canoe to the tub of the nearest Costello twin. “Get in here carefully, Micky. You are going down.”
“That’s ’cause Aloysius always gets the best tub. He ain’t sinking none,” said Michael Costello, scowling at his twin.
“Quick!” commanded Amy, and the disgruntled Costello swarmed over the side of the canoe. “We can take in one more. Who is the nearest drowned?”
“I’m sitting in half a foot of water,” confessed the red-haired Shannon, grinning.
“A little soaking will do you good. I can guess who suggested this crazy venture,” Jessie said. “Come, Henrietta.”
“I need her to trim ship!” cried Charlie Foley.
“What do you want to trim your ship with – red, white and blue?” demanded Amy. “If that trough sinks I know you can swim, Charlie.”
The crowd would have had some difficulty in getting back to shore with the wind blowing as freshly as it did if the girls had not come along and, in relays, helped them all back.
“What Mrs. Shannon will say when she sees her two washtubs floating off like that, I don’t know,” sighed Henrietta, after they were all ashore.
“One of ’em’s sunk, so she can’t see it,” Micky Costello said calmly. “Maybe the other will go down. Don’t you big girls say anything and maybe she won’t find it out.”
Jessie and Amy had headed for Dogtown in the first place without any expectation of playing a life-saving part. Jessie thought they ought to see Mrs. Foley, who was fleshy and easy of disposition, and ask her about Henrietta’s visit. So they accompanied the freckle-faced little girl to the Foley house.
“I ain’t telling ’em all they can come to visit my island, Miss Jessie,” said the little girl. “But of course, the Foleys could come. Mrs. Blair and Bertha wouldn’t mind just them, of course. There’s only Mrs. Foley and Charlie and Billy and the baby and three more boys and – and – well, that’s all, only Mr. Foley. He wouldn’t want to come.”
“You would better be sure of your island, and just how much you own of it, Hen,” advised Amy Drew. “It may not be big enough to hold everybody you want to invite.”
“Why, Miss Amy, it’s a awful big island,” declared little Henrietta. “It’s got a whole golf link on it. I heard Mr. Blair say so.”
The “bulgy” Mrs. Foley welcomed the Roselawn girls with her usual copiousness. Of course, she had the youngest Foley in her lap, and the housework was “at sixes and sevens,” since little Henrietta had been at Stratfordtown for a week.
“How I’m going to git used, young ladies, to havin’ that child away is more than I can say. ’Tis a great mistake I have all boys for childers. There is nothing like a smart girl around the house.”
Jessie, very curious, asked the woman what she knew about Henrietta’s wonderful story of wealth.
“Sure, I’ve always expected it would come to her some day,” declared Mrs. Foley. “Her mother, who was a good neighbor of mine before we moved out here to the lake, said Hen’s father come of rich folks. They used to drive their own carriage. That was before automobiles come in so plenteous.”
“Did Bertha ever say anything about it, Mrs. Foley?”
“Not much. ’Tis Hen will be the rich wan. Oh, yes. And glad I am if the child is about to come into her own. She’s no business to be running down here every chance she gets. I had himself telephone to Bertha when he went to town this morning, and it is likely she will be here after the child. Hen’s as wild as a hawk.”
Bertha Blair, in fact, appeared in a hired car before Jessie and Amy were ready to return in their canoe to Roselawn. She was quite as excited as Henrietta had been about the strange fortune that promised to come into their lives. Bertha could tell the chums from Roselawn many more particulars of the Padriac Haney property.
“If little Henrietta will only be good and not be so wild and learn her lessons and mind what she’s told,” Bertha said seriously, “maybe she will have money and an island – or part of one, anyway. But she does not behave very well. She is as wild as a March hare.”
Little Henrietta looked serious for her; but Mrs. Foley took her part at once.
“Sure don’t be expectin’ too much of the child at wance, Bertha. She’s run as wild as the wind itself here. She’s fought and played with these Dogtown kids since she was able to toddle around. What would ye expect?”
“But she must learn,” declared the older girl. “Mrs. Blair won’t take us to the island this summer if she is not good.”
“Then I’ll go myself,” announced Henrietta. “It’s my island, ain’t it? Who has a better right there?”
Jessie took a hand at this point, shaking her head gravely at the freckled little girl.
“Do you suppose, Henrietta Haney, that your friends – like Mrs. Foley or Mrs. Blair, or even Amy and I – will want to come to your island to see you if you are not a good girl?”
“Say, if I get rich can’t I do like I want to – like other rich folks?”
“You most certainly cannot. Rich people, if they are to be loved, must be even more careful in their conduct than poor folks.”
“We-ell,”