“Oh, Henrietta, Henrietta!” laughed Amy, gleefully. “How dull this life would be without you!”
“Yes’m,” agreed Henrietta, dutifully.
Bertha explained her presence in New Melford and then asked the girls why they had come downtown. When they told her about the proposed trip to Forest Lodge little Henrietta’s face fell woefully.
“Then I won’t get to see you for two whole weeks,” mourned the little girl. But she soon added, with a sudden brightness of countenance: “I don’t suppose it would be noways possible to take me along, would it?”
“I am afraid not, dear,” said Jessie, slipping an arm about the wistful little thing while Amy stifled a laugh at thought of what the boys would say if they proposed “ringing little Hen in on the trip.” “You will have to be at hand, anyway,” she added with sudden inspiration, “in case anything comes up about your island.”
Little Hen’s face immediately lost all trace of wistfulness. Her small countenance assumed the expression of importance it always wore when any one mentioned “her island.”
“That’s so, Miss Jessie,” she agreed gravely. “I just couldn’t go and leave my island.”
Henrietta’s appetite had long been a marvel to the girls, but on this occasion it seemed to them she put to shame all previous records.
However, the girls noticed with approval—for they were really fond of the wild little thing—that Henrietta’s arms and legs had lost somewhat their resemblance to very thin broomsticks. Prosperity was agreeing with the child. She was actually taking on flesh.
The girls remarked this aloud, and to their surprise Henrietta looked more worried than pleased.