CHAPTER XXIV
THE GREAT DAY ARRIVES
Burd Alling usually had the appearance of being half asleep. But he proved at this juncture to be quite as wide awake as anybody. He uttered a whistle of amazement and flung himself across the little round bed and scrambled up the short trunk of the pear tree.
“Hey! Where are you going?” demanded Darry. “You’ll break another branch of that tree, you big elephant! It’s damaged enough already.”
But the girls knew what Burd was after. They waited eagerly for him to reach for the object swinging from the broken limb of the tree. He gained his intent and slid back to the wet ground.
“It is! It is!” shouted Amy in delight.
“Oh, dear! And I almost believed one of the Dogtown children had it,” sighed Jessie.
“Well, I declare! You don’t mean to say that is Mark’s watch?” cried Darry in amazement.
“That is exactly what it is,” declared his chum. “I’ve seen it a hundred times. And anyway,” he added, grinning, “there isn’t likely to be two such watches kicking about the Norwood premises.”
“Well, it beats my time!” ejaculated Darry. “How did the silly fellow hang his watch in that tree when he was coming down in his plane? It gets me!”
“We’ll take it to him when we drive the girls over to the concert to-morrow,” said Burd.
But at that Amy uttered a squeal and reached for the watch with clutching fingers. “No you don’t, Mister Alling!” she cried, taking the watch and chain out of his hand with a sudden swoop. “Jess saw it first. She is going to give it to Mark Stratford.”
“That’s right,” said Darry, smiling. “Maybe he will feel like giving her a reward.”
“He most certainly will,” his sister declared. “And I know what she’ll ask him to do for us.”
Jessie looked at her chum knowingly. But she said quietly:
“If you boys don’t mind, Amy and I will return the watch. And I want to show it to Momsy and Daddy Norwood. It will be a surprise to the whole Norwood family, for we scarcely thought that it ever would be found.”
“What you going to do about this aerial, Jess?” Darry asked.
“You boys might help us put it up again, if it stops raining long enough. We’d like to listen in to-night, wouldn’t we, Amy?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed her chum. “Wait till I run home and put on my radio suit.”
“Cheese!” exclaimed Burd. “Darry and I will do it while you girls are fussing-up. All girls are alike. They have to have a certain dress for every adventure.”
“Just the same,” laughed Jessie, “I mean to stay right here and see you do it. We don’t want to get those wires twisted as they did down there at the Carter place.”
“And hurry up—do,” urged Amy. “It will rain again before you know it. The Ringold picnic is going to be an awful fiasco. Bless that Spotted Snake! I am going to beg another dress from Nell Stanley for her, and take her over to the concert to-morrow.”
“That is a good thought, Amy,” cried her chum with approval. “Better than a doll. Will there be time in the morning?”
“Sure. I’ll see Nell to-night. Then we’ll run down after little Hen early to-morrow. She will be delighted to see her Cousin Bertha.”
“The goddesses from the machine!” exclaimed Darry. “They make everything come out right for their friends.”
“Including the finding of diamond studded watches,” added Jessie, gaily twirling the recovered watch above her head before she ran into the house to show it to Momsy.
It rained just enough that evening to spoil utterly the affair at the Carter place. The Roselawn girls heard afterward that the lights were put out and the radio and other things packed by eight o’clock. The entertainment was a failure. There was no use in trying to run the affair when nobody came to it.
The great day toward which the Roselawn girls had been looking so long and so eagerly, broke brightly. Amy said, with delight, that “the witch’s curse” certainly had not lapped over upon this Thursday. New Melford was laughing about the Ringold affair, and it was not likely that Belle and her mother would soon endeavor to interfere with any plans of the Hospital Fund Committee.
Of course, rain would scarcely have troubled the committee, but the girls thought it was much nicer to have a fair day in which to motor over to Stratfordtown.
Amy had secured another dress that would fit Henrietta, for the minister’s daughter often received gifts of such half-worn garments. Nell Stanley was a perfect housewife and made “the Reverend,” as she called her father, such a good home that he never felt the need of an older person to govern his household.
“I know I have got something more suitable for that child than a taffeta silk,” laughed Nell. “She looked like a little freckle-faced doll in that dress.”
Jessie was delighted with the pretty gingham Amy brought up from the parsonage. There was very little to do to it to make it fit Henrietta, and the girls did that little while they sat listening to the radio telephone.
In the morning the boys drove them over to Dogtown through the bright sunshine and they “borrowed” little Hen for the day. The pretty new frock delighted her. She put it on, and then marched out across the platform of the cottage in full furbelow, her hair in curl-papers and Mrs. Foley’s ancient purple silk parasol held over her head.
“Be careful of that parasol, Henrietta,” admonished Mrs. Foley. “’Tis the wan remaining thing that I had on me wedding day to show off wit’, that me man hasn’t hocked. The handle is rale ivory.”
“Oh, see Spotted Snake with the parasol!” shrieked one of the smaller urchins.
Immediately Henrietta stuck out her tongue and writhed her freckled features into a horrifying mask. “You look out, Sudsy M’Guire, or the witch will put the come-other on you,” threatened Henrietta.
“Ain’t she the smart young one?” said Mrs. Foley proudly to Jessie. “She’s got ’em all scaret of her—me own byes like the rest. And they are all saying that she made the bad weather yesterday that ruined the party of them Ringolds and Moons,” and the bulgy Mrs. Foley was left shaking in her chair when the motor car rolled away.
The Roselawn girls combed out Henrietta’s hair and smartened her up with ribbons before they started for Stratfordtown. They likewise managed to get her to leave the purple parasol behind.
“I s’pose,” she confessed, “that I’d better not wear everything I’ve got that’s fashionable all on one day. But that parasol is dreadful stylish.”
The party arrived at the Stratford Electric Company plant so near the time for the concert that they had no time to look up Mark Stratford and give him the watch. But Bertha Blair was in the anteroom at the top of the factory, and she was very much excited. Glad as she was to see little Henrietta, there was something that had ruffled her composure.
“Oh, I have the strangest thing to tell you, Miss Jessie,” she whispered to Jessie Norwood. “Wait till the concert is over. I must speak to you.”
“Is it about Henrietta?” Jessie asked.
“Well, yes; in a way. Henrietta is going to share in the most wonderful fortune! You never would have suspected it. Oh! Here he is.”
Mr. Blair entered the room and Bertha nodded gaily to him. Jessie thought that the usually grave superintendent of the broadcasting station had an expression on his face different from his usual look.
But as Bertha said, there was no time then to discuss any matter. The hour set for the sending of the entertainment struck. They entered the sending room. Mr. Blair stood before a big horn and announced the nature of the charity for which the entertainment was to be given, and in which he hoped all the radio enthusiasts listening in would become interested to the amount of such contributions as they could afford.
The entertainment was divided into two halves. Madame Elva, one of the Roselawn girls’ favorite professional performers, sang a group of three songs in the first half; and soon after this it came Jessie’s turn to sing her short ballad. The girl was rather frightened when her turn came. Although she could not see the great audience that was listening in at this hour, she realized that Madame Elva herself and several other professionals were in the sending room.
Jessie had preferred to stand before the sending horn rather than sit in the comfortable chair that most of the performers occupied when they were sending. Mr. Blair came close to her and, leaning a little forward, spoke into the horn in deliberate tones:
“Stratfordtown Station: The next number on our program will be a song entitled ‘Lily of Mine,’ sung by Miss Jessie Norwood, of Roselawn. We introduce Miss Jessie Norwood.”
For the moment Jessie was badly scared. It smote upon her mind suddenly that several thousand people were listening for the first tones of her voice. Although she could not hear or see her audience, it was there—and just as critical an audience as one in a great hall.
She heard the chords struck by the pianist; it seemed to her that she could not possibly find her voice! Jessie Norwood was afflicted with a pronounced case of radio telephone fright, which is quite as serious as the ordinary stage fright. She felt that she was voiceless!