“Oh, she’ll turn up, Miss Jessie. She always does,” said the child, confidently, adding with the first trace of anxiety she had exhibited: “But I hope she don’t take too long. I got an awful ache where my tummy is. I’m gettin’ hungry, I guess.”
Amy went off into a fresh paroxysm of mirth while Jessie questioned the child closely as to the exact location of Bertha and herself when the little girl had first seen the two Radio Girls. Being able to extract but the vaguest information from Hen, Jessie came to the conclusion that the only sensible thing to do was to wait just where they were until Bertha found them.
“It was very naughty of you to run away so, Henrietta,” she scolded gently. “I hope you will never do a thing like that again.”
“But, Miss Jessie!” the child protested, with wide-eyed surprise, “if I hadn’t run away from Bertha I couldn’t have caught you. I just had to run away.”
At this logic Jessie shook her head helplessly while Amy regarded the remarkable child with unfeigned delight. As a matter of fact, Henrietta Haney was a perpetual joy to the fun-loving Amy—“better than a box seat at the circus,” she herself expressed it.
“There’s Bertha now!” shrieked the child, suddenly, and made another wild dash through the crowd, bumping into half a dozen indignant pedestrians as she went.
Amy, watching this progress with delight, chuckled softly.
“Thank goodness she is in Bertha’s charge, not ours!” she said.
CHAPTER IV
AN ACCUSATION
Bertha Blair had been at one time a mystery to the Radio Girls. A witness in a very important law case being tried by Mr. Norwood, she had been spirited off by unscrupulous persons and kept in captivity in order that her testimony might not be forthcoming.