"But the golf course belongs to me, and some bungleloos," added the child, mispronouncing the word with her usual emphasis. "And we are going out to this island to spend the summer--Bertha and me. Mrs. Blair says we can. And she will go, too. The man that knows about it has told the Blairs how to get there and--and--I invite you, Miss Jessie, and you, Miss Amy, to come out on Station Island and visit us. Oh, we'll have fun!"
"That sounds better than any old farm," cried Amy, gaily. "I accept, Hen, on the spot. You can count on me."
"If it is all right so that we can go, I will promise to visit you, dear," Jessie agreed. "But, you know, we really will have to learn more about it."
"Cousin Bertha will tell you," said the freckle-faced child, eagerly. "I run away to come down here to the Foleys, so as to tell you first. You are the very first folks I have ever invited to come to live on my island."
"Ain't you going to let me come, Spot--I mean, Hen?" asked Monty Shannon, who sat sidewise on the seat and was paying very little attention to the pony.
As a matter of fact, the pony belonging to the vegetable vender was so old and sedate that one would scarcely think it necessary to watch him.
But at this very moment a red car, traveling at a pace much over the legal speed on a public highway, came dashing around the turn just below the Norwood house. It took the turn on two wheels, and as it swerved dangerously toward the curb where the pony stood, its rear wheels skidded. "Look out!" shrieked Amy. "That car is out of control! Look, Jess!"
Her chum, by looking at it, nor the observation of any other bystander, could scarcely avert the disaster that Amy Drew feared. But she was so excited that she scarcely knew what she shouted. And her mad gestures and actions utterly amazed Jessie.
"Have you got Saint Vitus's dance, Amy Drew?" Jessie demanded.
The red, low-hung car wabbled several times back and forth across the oiled driveway. They saw a hatless young fellow in front behind the wheel. In the narrow tonneau were two girls, and if they were not exactly frightened they did not look happy.
Nell Stanley cried: "It's Bill Brewster's racing car; and he's got Belle and Sally with him."
"Belle and Sally!" shrieked Amy.
Belle Ringold and her follower, Sally Moon, were not much older than Amy and Jessie, but they were overbearing and insolent and had made themselves obnoxious to many of their schoolmates. Wishing to appear grown up, and wishing, above all things, to attract Amy's brother Darry and Darry's chum, Burd Alling, and feeling that in some way the two Roselawn chums interfered in this design, they were especially unpleasant in their behavior toward them. Sometimes Belle and Sally had been able to make the Roselawn girls feel unhappy by their haughty speech and what Amy called their "snippy ways." Just now, however, circumstances forbade the two unpleasant girls annoying anybody.
The others had identified the reckless driver and his passengers. At least, all had recognized the party save Montmorency Shannon. He just managed to jump out of the phaeton in time. The pony was still asleep when the rear of the skidding red car crashed against the phaeton and crushed it into a wreck across the curbstone.
CHAPTER III--A FLARE-UP
The red car stopped before it completely overturned. Then, when the exhaust was shut off, the screams of the two girls in the back seat could be heard. But nobody shouted any louder than Montmorency Shannon.
The red-haired boy had leaped from the phaeton and had seized the pony by the bit. Otherwise the surprised animal might have set off for home, Amy said, "on a perfectly apoplectic run."
The little animal stood shaking and pawing, nothing but the shafts and whiffle-tree remaining attached to it by the harness. The rear wheels of the racing car were entangled in the phaeton and it was slewed across the road.
"Now see what you've done! Now see what you've done!" one of the girls in the car was saying, over and over.
"Well, I couldn't help it, Belle," whined the reckless young Brewster.
"You and Sally Moon aren't hurt. And you asked to ride with me, anyway."
"Oh, I don't mean you, Bill!" exclaimed the girl behind him. "But that horrid boy with his pony carriage! What business had he to get in the way?"
"Hey! 'Tain't my carriage, you Ringold girl," declared Monty Shannon.
"It's Cabbage-head Tony's. He'll sue your father for this, Bill Brewster. And you come near killing me and the pony."
"I don't see how you came to be standing just there," complained the driver of the red car. "You might have been on the other side of the drive."
"He ought to have been!" declared Belle Ringold promptly. "He was headed the wrong way. I'll testify for you, Bill. Of course he was headed wrong."
"Why, you're another!" cried Monty. "If I'd been headed the wrong way you'd have smashed the pony instead of the carriage."
"Never mind what they say, Monty," Jessie Norwood put in quietly. "There are three of us here who saw the collision, and we can testify to the truth."
"And me. I seen it," added Henrietta eagerly. "Don't forget that Spotted Snake, the Witch, seen it all. If you big girls tell stories about Monty and that pony, you'll wish you hadn't--now you see!" and she began making funny gestures with her hands and writhing her features into perfectly frightful contortions.
"Henrietta!" commanded Jessie Norwood, yet having hard work, like Nell and Amy, to keep from laughing at the freckle-faced child. "Henrietta, stop that! Don't you know that is not a polite way--nor a nice way--to act?"
"Why, Miss Jessie, they won't know that," complained little Henrietta.
"They are never nice or polite."
At this statement Monty Shannon burst out laughing, too. The red-haired boy could not be long of serious mind.
"Never you mind, Brewster," he said to the unfortunate driver of the red car, who was notorious for getting into trouble. "Never mind; we ain't killed. And your father can pay Cabbage-head Tony all right. It won't break him."
"You impudent thing!" exclaimed Belle Ringold, who was a very proud and unpleasant girl. "You are always making trouble for people, Montmorency Shannon. It was you who would not finish stringing our radio antenna at the Carter place and so helped spoil our picnic."
"He didn't! He didn't!" ejaculated Henrietta, dancing up and down in her excitement. "It was me--Spotted Snake! I brought down the curse of bad weather on your old picnic--the witch's curse. I'm the one that brought thunder and lightning and rain to spoil your fun. And I'll do it again."
She was so excited that Jessie could not silence her. Sally Moon burst into a scornful laugh, but her chum, Belle, said, fanning herself as she sat in the stalled car:
"Don't give them any attention. These Roselawn girls are just as low as the Dogtown kids. Thank goodness, Sally, we will get away from them all for the rest of the summer."
"Your satisfaction will only be equaled by ours," laughed Amy Drew.
"I don't know whether you will get rid of me or not, Belle," said Nell Stanley composedly. "If you mean to go to Hackle Island--"
"Father has engaged the handsomest suite at the hotel there," Belle broke in. "I fancy Doctor Stanley will not feel like taking you all there, Nellie. It is very expensive."
"Oh, no, if we go we sha'n't be able to live at the hotel," confessed the clergyman's daughter. "But the children will get the benefit of the sea air."
"Oh!" murmured Amy. "Hackle Island is a nice place."
"But it ain't as nice as mine!" Henrietta suddenly broke in. "My island is the best. And I wouldn't let those girls on it--not on my part of it."
"What is that ridiculous child talking about?" demanded Belle scornfully, while Bill Brewster continued to crawl about under his car to discover if possible what had happened to it. "What does she mean?"
"I got an island, and everything," announced Henrietta. "I'm going to be just as rich as you are, but I won't be so mean."
"Then you would better begin by not talking meanly," advised Jessie, admonishingly.
"Well," sniffed Henrietta, "I haven't got to let 'em on my island if I don't want to, have I?"
"You needn't fret," laughed Sally Moon. "Your island is like your witch's curse. All in your mind."
"Is that so?" flared out little Henrietta. "Your old picnic was just spoiled by my bad weather, wasn't it? Well, then, wait till you try to get on my island," and she shook a threatening head, and even her green parasol, in her earnestness.