“It is wonderful!” Jessie exclaimed. “‘Gossip out of the air’ is the right name for it. Just think of it, Amy! When we were born there was very little known about all this wonderful wireless.”
“Sh!” commanded her chum. “Don’t remind folks how frightfully young we are.”
CHAPTER X—ISLAND ADVENTURES
The Marigold loafed along within sight of the beaches that evening and the girls and their friends reclined in the deck-chairs and watched the parti-colored electric lights that wreathed the shore-front. Jessie was careful to keep Henrietta near by. She began to realize that looking after the freckle-faced little girl was going to be something of a trial.
Henrietta finally grew sleepy and Jessie and Amy took her below, helped her undress, and tucked her into a berth. The Roselawn girls’ mothers were much amused by this. Their daughters had taken a task upon themselves that would, as Mrs. Norwood said, teach them something.
“And it will not hurt them,” Mrs. Drew agreed, with an answering smile. “Amy, especially, needs to know what ‘duty’ means.”
“Anyway, we’ll know where she is while she is asleep,” Jessie said to her chum, as they left the little girl.
“If she isn’t a somnambulist,” chuckled Amy. “We forgot to ask Mrs. Foley or Bertha that.”
The ground swell lulled the girls to sleep that night, and even Henrietta did not awake until the first breakfast call in the morning. Through the port-light Jessie and Amy saw Burd Alling “bursting his cheeks with sound” as he essayed the changes on the key-bugle.
The Marigold was slipping along the coast easily, with the northern end of Station Island already in sight. The castle-like hotel sprawled all over the headland, but the widest bathing beach was just below it. Next were the premises of the Hackle Island Gold Club, with its pastures, shrubberies, and several water-holes. It was to a part of these enclosed premises that Mr. Norwood said little Henrietta Haney was laying claim.