Jessie ran down the steps and the path to the street. When the freckled child saw her coming she stood up and waved the parasol at the Roselawn girl.
Henrietta Haney was a child in whom the two Roselawn girls had become much interested while she had lived in the Dogtown district of New Melford with Mrs. Foley and her family. Montmorency Shannon was a red-haired urchin from the same poor quarters, and he and Henrietta were the best of friends.
“Oh, Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! What d’you think? I’m rich!”
“She certainly is rich,” choked Amy, following her chum with Nell Stanley. “She’s a scream.”
“What do you mean—that you are rich, Henrietta?” Jessie asked, smiling at her little protégé.
“I tell you, I am rich. Or, I am goin’ to be. I own an island and everything. And there’s bungleloos on it, and fishing, and a golf course, and everything. I am rich.”
“What can the child mean?” asked Jessie Norwood, looking back at her friends. “She sounds as though she believed it was actually so.”
CHAPTER II—A PUZZLING QUESTION
Little Henrietta Haney, with her green parasol and her freckles, came stumbling out of the low phaeton, so eager to tell Jessie the news that excited her that she could scarcely make herself understood at all. She fairly stuttered.
“I’m rich! I got an island and everything!” she crowed, over and over again. Then she saw Amy Drew’s delighted countenance and she added: “Don’t you laugh, Miss Amy, or I won’t let you go to my island at all. And there’s radio there.”