CHAPTER V
THE HOSPITAL DRIVE
“Really, girls, unless you were moles, you could scarcely have searched more faithfully for Mark’s watch,” Mrs. Norwood said, coming out to preside over the activities of Jessie and Amy.
“What do you suppose has become of the thing?” sighed her daughter.
“I’ve dug my fingernails full of dirt. Manicuring will never repair the ravages of it,” Amy said ruefully, looking at her hands.
The rubbish left from the wrecked plane had all been removed. The workmen from Stratfordtown had seen nothing of Mark’s lovely watch. Although it was rather an old-fashioned piece of jewelry for a young man to wear, the girls knew that it was very valuable. But it was the associations connected with the gift that made it particularly valuable in the consideration of the senator’s injured son.
“It is too bad,” sighed Jessie again. “Mark was almost killed by his tumble, and now he must give up his watch.”
“Say!” drawled Amy. “Did you ever think that he has lost his nice shiny aeroplane, too? That is scarcely worth carting back to Stratfordtown. I heard one of the men say so.”
“Have you looked everywhere for the watch, girls?” Mrs. Norwood asked. “I dread telephoning over to tell him that we cannot find it.”
“Maybe we would better look again,” Jessie observed doubtfully.
“But you have already dug over the whole garden. My poor Marshal Niels!” murmured her mother.
“It is no use,” declared Amy, with briskness. “Somebody came along and picked it up.”
“Oh! Don’t say that!” cried Jessie.
“It might be so,” her mother observed. “There have been people around to view the wreck. Those children, for instance, last evening.”
“That’s just what I said; but Jess won’t hear to it,” Amy cried. “We don’t know how honest those Dogtown kids are.”
“Little Henrietta is no thief,” Jessie declared earnestly.
“I don’t believe she is, either,” her mother said, smiling. “That funny little thing could not possibly be mean, if she is untamed. But those children with her—especially those boys. A watch such as this that has been lost would be a great temptation.”
“But, Momsy! They would not even know the value of it.”
“Leave it to Henrietta, or to Montmorency Shannon,” said Amy quickly. “That Shannon boy doesn’t have to be led about by a little dog,” and Amy laughed again.
“Of course he is smart enough,” agreed Jessie. “But being smart and poor does not prove his dishonesty,” she added severely.
“That is true, Jessie,” her mother said approvingly. “Poverty does not walk hand-in-hand with dishonesty by any manner of means. And the poor need our help in any event. That is what we are trying to establish the new hospital for. That fund is worrying me,” and the good woman sighed.
“It’s a far cry from Mark’s watch and Montmorency Shannon to the New Melford’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital,” laughed Amy, immediately recovering her spirits.
“And a still farther cry to our new aerial,” Jessie said. “Come, Amy, there is no use grubbing here any more. We might as well get to work erecting the wires again. I know where there is part of a roll of number fourteen wire in the garage. We’ll need some of that.”
“Radio?” said Mrs. Norwood, hesitatingly. “I wonder, Jessie, if that isn’t the way to help us out?”
“What do you mean, Momsy?” her daughter asked.
“The hospital fund need is on my mind. If we could give some new entertainment by which to raise money—and what is newer than radio?”
“Radio telephony is not exactly new,” Jessie said reflectively. “You know that, Momsy. But I suppose we could give a radio entertainment again. It would not be exactly new——”
“Oh! Oh!” cried Amy Drew suddenly, and she pirouetted about on the torn sward and clapped her hands.
“My dear Amy,” laughed Jessie, “has something bitten you?”
“Exactly,” agreed the excited Amy. “And it is an awful bite—believe me!”
“That sounds very much like slang to me, Amy,” laughed Jessie’s mother. “What do you mean? What is it that has bitten you?”
“An idea,” replied Amy energetically. “And the finest ever! Listen, folkses!”
“Do tell us, dear,” said her chum warmly.
“At the bazaar, you know,” Amy said earnestly, “Jess just connected up with whatever chanced to be coming through the ether. It was bits of program from all over. But why not have a regular program—a big one—broadcasted from one station for the special purpose of attracting attention to your drive for the hospital fund, Mrs. Norwood?”
“I don’t just see, Amy——”
“I do! I do!” cried Jessie delightedly. “Oh, Momsy, don’t you see? Get big singers like Madame Elva, and other musicians, and all those interested in your hospital. Then find some sending station where they will let you give the concert——”
“The Stratford Electric Company,” interrupted Amy.
“Good! Fine!” crowed Jessie.
“Can such a thing be done?” asked the wondering Mrs. Norwood, who had a rather confused idea of the uses of radio telephony.
“Of course it can be done, Momsy. It is a wonderful idea. Think! Thousands and thousands of people will be listening in.”
“But won’t the concert have to be given in a hall—like your entertainment in the tent?”
“Nothing like that, Momsy,” declared her energetic daughter. “Understand that if you get your entertainers together at a certain hour at the sending station—say eight o’clock in the evening—and arrange to have them sing and play and recite just as though the audience were before them, you will be able to get many, many people to listen in who understand that, although they are getting a free concert, it is one to advertise the need of the New Melford Women’s and Children’s Hospital.”
“Oh! How ingenious you two girls are,” said Mrs. Norwood with more than slight approval. “But do you suppose the people who have radio sets will understand?”
“They will if there is not too much atmospherics,” Amy said, grinning.
“Stop joking, Amy. Don’t spoil it all,” cried Jessie. “You have started a perfectly fine idea. And we must help Momsy carry it out.”
“Oh, my dears,” Mrs. Norwood hastened to say, “you must understand that I cannot decide this thing myself. I am only one of the committee. But it does seem as though Amy’s thought were really inspired.”
“That’s all the thoughts I have—the inspired kind,” declared Amy gravely. “And they are at your service, Mrs. Norwood.”
That was the start of it. Mrs. Norwood began calling up the other ladies of the hospital fund committee and explaining Amy’s idea to them. She really forgot, for the time, that she was supposed to report to Stratfordtown that Mark’s beautiful watch was not to be found anywhere about the Norwood premises.
“And do you suppose,” said Jessie to her chum, in a worried tone, as they set to work to string again the radio antenna, “that somebody picked up that watch Mark lost? I hate to think any one about here would steal it.”
“What do you mean—steal it?” asked Amy briskly. “If it was merely picked up—why, I would do that myself. I certainly would not leave a diamond-studded watch lying on the ground. Not much!”
“But you would not pick it up and walk off without saying anything about it,” objected Jessie. “No, you wouldn’t. And nobody else who really was honest.”
“Well, those kids from Dogtown don’t know as much about honesty as we do, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to believe such a thing about them, especially about little Henrietta.”
“She’s awfully cute, I admit,” said Amy. “But after all, we do not know just how good she is.”
Jessie sighed. The very reason why she would not admit the possibility of Henrietta’s knowing anything about the lost watch was based on this point that Amy had brought up. They did not know much about Henrietta Haney’s moral character, and nothing at all of the characters of the children she associated with at Dogtown.
“It seems reasonable that the lost watch would be a great temptation to any of those kids who were poking about the wrecked aeroplane last night,” said Amy, after a pause in the conversation, during which the girls were busy with the antenna.
“A whole lot of things that are reasonable aren’t true,” responded Jessie, a little sharply for her.
“Yes, and a whole lot that are unreasonable are true, I suppose,” agreed her chum.
“Anyway, I don’t believe, and I don’t intend to believe unless I have to, that little Henrietta or any of her friends had anything to do with the disappearance of that watch. So there!” And Jessie went on with her work rather grimly.