"Either here or inside the shark," said Darry. "One thing sure, he never could have caught you girls."
"Well," Amy sighed, "we had all the excitement of racing with a shark, even if the shark was only in our minds. I'll never be so scared by one again."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Jessie. "I know I shall always be nervous in the water here after this. I'll always be looking for one. What an awful feeling it is to try to swim when one is being pursued by----"
"By a pair of swimming wings," chuckled Burd. "Some imagination you've got, my dear Jess."
There was a serious side to the matter, however. Although the shark scare had proved to be groundless, the quartette decided to say nothing about it to those ashore.
"Especially to Momsy," Jessie Norwood said. "I don't want to make her nervous. Little things annoy her."
"She'll be some annoyed by little Hen, then," chuckled Amy. "Hen is worse than any shark you ever saw."
"How terrible!" cried Jessie. "She is not a bad child at all, but she is wild enough."
When they swam ashore later they found Henrietta on her good behavior with Momsy. Nobody on the sands had chanced to see the excitement out by the raft. Or, if they had, it was merely supposed that the four young people from Roselawn were playing in the water.
Jessie, however, felt rather serious about it. And she knew she would never go into the sea again at Station Island without thinking about sharks.
While they were playing hand-ball on the beach, still in their bathing suits, a low-wheeled pony carriage came along the drive from the upper end of the island, and Amy's sharp eyes spied and recognized the two girls seated on the back seat of the vehicle.
"And that's Bill Brewster driving!" cried Amy. "Some difference between the speed of that quadruped and his sports car."
"One thing sure," chuckled Burd. "He can't do so much damage with that old Dobbin as he did with the car he drives about New Melford."
"Belle and Sally have got a hen on," said the slangy Amy to Jessie. "See them whispering together?"
"I can see what they are up to from right where I stand," announced Darry, dropping the ball. "Come on, Burd! Let's beat it for the raft again. That's one place those two girls can't follow us without bathing suits."
"He, he!" giggled his sister. "I hope they sit right down here and wait for you to come ashore."
"Send out our supper by the lifeguard," called Burd, as he followed his chum into the surf. "We fear sharks less than we do a certain brand of featherless biped."
"I suppose it would be too pointed for us to run away," said Amy to Jessie, as Bill Brewster drove the pony carriage out on to the beach.
"Belle has got her eye on us, that is a fact," agreed Jessie.
She was curious, especially after what their new friend had told them an hour before about the story that Belle Ringold was circulating. Belle was eager to talk--as she always was.
"So your folks got one of these bungalows, did they, after all, Jess Norwood?" she began. "I suppose you know there is no surety that you can keep it a month?"
"I don't know about that. I guess father attended to the lease. And he is a lawyer, you know," said Jessie, quietly.
"Pooh! Yes," said Belle, tossing her head. "But there are lawyers and lawyers! My father has the smartest lawyer in New York working for him.
And I suppose you know about the claim he has against all the middle of this island?"
"We have heard that _you_ have a claim on the island--or think you have,"
said Amy slyly. "But, then, Belle, you always did think you owned the earth."
"Now, Miss Smartie, don't be too funny! Father is going to prove his right to the golf course and all these bungalows. Don't you fear-- Why!
There's that terrible Henrietta Haney! How did she come here?"
"She is with us," said Jessie shortly.
"Oh, indeed! One of your week-end guests, I suppose?" scoffed Belle. "We are entertaining General O'Bigger and Mrs. O'Bigger at the hotel. Of course, we would not live in one of these small bungalows--not even if we needed a vacation."
"You wouldn't," said Henrietta promptly, "because I wouldn't let you."
"Oh! Oh! Hear that child!" cried Sally Moon.
"Nor you, neither," declared Henrietta. "All them houses are mine--or they are going to be."
"Hush, Henrietta," commanded Jessie, in a low voice.
"Didn't the funny little thing say something before about owning an island?" asked Belle, somewhat puzzled.
"And this is it," said Henrietta. "You just try to come into any of them bungleloos! I'd get a policeman and have him take you out. So now!"
"_Will_ you behave?" said Jessie, feeling like shaking the child, and in reality leading her away.
Amy came running after them in the midst of Jessie's berating of the freckle-faced girl.
"Did you ever hear such nonsense?" Jessie's chum demanded. "Belle declares the case is coming up in court next week and that her father is going to win. Did you ever?"
Mr. Norwood was sitting with his wife when they came near to that lady's beach chair. Jessie was anxious enough to ask about Belle's statement regarding the imminent court investigation of the controversy over Station Island.
"Why, yes, Ringold's lawyers claim they have found new evidence entitling him to be heard as a claimant to the Padriac Haney estate,"
the lawyer acknowledged. "But there may not be anything in it."
"But is there a possibility, Robert?" Momsy asked, seeing how anxious both Jessie and the little girl looked.
"There is nothing sure in any case that comes into court," declared her husband. "Besides, those attorneys of Ringold's are sharp fellows. He may make his claim good."
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" burst out Henrietta. "And then I won't have nuthin'? No island, nor golf link, nor--nor nuthin'? Oh, dear me!"
"Never mind, honey," Jessie begged. "You have friends. You have _me_."
And she sat down on the sands and took the freckle-faced little girl in her arms.
"Ye-es, Miss Jessie. I know I got you," sobbed Henrietta. "But--but you ain't a golf link, nor you ain't a bungleloo. And--and I want to turn that Ringold girl off my island, I do!"
CHAPTER XIV--SOMETHING NEW IN RADIO
The Stanleys arrived at Station Island the next day, the doctor having arranged for a substitute preacher at the Roselawn Church for two Sundays. The bungalow they had arranged to occupy was one of the colony not far from the big house the Norwoods and their party were staying in.