“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.”