Sally laughed again scornfully. But Belle flounced out of the automobile.
"Come on!" she exclaimed. "Bill will never get this car fixed."
"Oh, yes, I will, Belle," came Bill's muffled voice from under the car.
"I always do."
"Well, who wants to wait all day for you to repair it, and then ride home with a fellow all smeared up with oil and soot? Come on, Sally."
Sally Moon meekly followed. That was how she kept in Belle Ringold's good graces. You had to do everything Belle said, and do just as she did, or you could not be friends with her.
"Well," Monty Shannon drawled, "as far as I think, you both can go. I won't weep none. But Bill's going to weep when he tells his father about this busted carriage."
"All Bill has to do is to deny it," snapped Belle Ringold. "Nobody would believe you against our testimony."
"Nobody but the judge," laughed Amy. "Don't be such a goose, Belle. We will all testify for Mr. Cabbage-head Tony."
Bill crawled out from under his automobile as the two girls who had been passengers walked away. He was just as much smutted as Belle said he would be. But he looked after her and her friend without betraying any dissatisfaction.
"It's all right," he said to Monty. "I guess you couldn't help being in the way. This car does go wrong once in a while. You can jump in the car and I'll take you home and tell the chap that owns the pony how it happened. He can come to my father and get paid."
"Not much," said the Dogtown boy. "I'll have to lead the pony. But you can take Hen back to Dogtown."
"Is it safe?" asked Jessie, for Henrietta had started for the red car at once. She was crazy about automobiles.
"If it goes bad again I can get out," said the child importantly. "I won't wait for it to turn topsy-turvy."
"She will be all right," said Bill Brewster gloomily. "Father will make me pay for this carriage out of my own money. I'm rather glad we are going where I can't use the machine for the rest of the summer. It eats up all my pocket money."
"Where are your folks going, Billy?" asked Jessie politely.
"Oh, we always go to Hackle Island."
"Everybody is going to an island," laughed Amy. "I guess we'll have to accept Hen's invitation and go to her island, Jess."
"It's a lot better island than that one those girls are going to,"
repeated Henrietta, with confidence, climbing into the red car.
When the latter was gone, and Monty Shannon was out of sight, leading the brown and white pony, the three Roselawn girls discussed little Henrietta's story of her sudden wealth, and particularly of her possession of Station Island, wherever that was.
"Of course, we won't understand the rights of the matter till we see Bertha," said Jessie. "She must know all about it."
"I wonder where Station Island is situated?" Amy observed. "Let's hunt an atlas---- Oh, no, we won't! Here is something better."
"Something better than an atlas?" laughed Nell. "A walking geography?"
"You said it," rejoined Amy. "Papa knows all about such things. I can't even remember how New Melford is bounded; but you'd think he had been all around the world, and walked every step of the way."
"And you never will know, Amy Drew, if you ask somebody every time you want to know anything and never stop to work the thing out yourself,"
admonished Jessie.
"Oh, piffle!" exclaimed the careless Amy. "What's the use?"
Mr. Drew was just coming out of his own grounds across the boulevard, and his daughter hailed him.
"Want to ask you an important question, papa," cried Amy, running to meet him and hanging to his arm.
"Ahem! If you expect advice, I expect a retainer," said the lawyer soberly.
"Nothing like that! I know you lawyers. I am going to wait to see if your advice is worth anything," declared his gay daughter. "Now, listen!
Did you ever hear of Station Island?"
"I have just heard of it," responded the gentleman promptly.
"Oh! Don't be so dreadfully smart," said Amy. "I know I am telling you----"
"Wrong. I had just heard of it to-day--before you mentioned it," returned her father. "But I have known of it for a good many years, under another name."
"Then you do know where Station Island is, Mr. Drew?" cried Jessie, eagerly. "We do so want to know."
"That is the new name they have given the place since the big radio station was established there. It is really Hackle Island, girls, and has been known by that name since our great-grandparents' days."
CHAPTER IV--UNCERTAINTIES
"It is lucky Henrietta went away before papa came," observed Amy, after they had discussed the strange matter at some length. "She certainly would have been mad to learn that Belle and Sally were likely to visit what she calls her island, without any invitation from her."
"What do you suppose it all means?" asked Jessie.
"She must have heard some mixed-up account of an island that belonged to her family," Nell said, "and got it twisted. I can't see it any other way. But I must go home now, girls. The Reverend and the children need looking after by this time. Good-bye."
Mr. Drew did not explain until evening about his previous knowledge of the island in question. Then he came over to smoke his after-dinner cigar on the Norwood's porch, and he and Jessie's father discussed the matter within the hearing of their two very much interested daughters.
When their fathers did not object, Jessie and Amy often "listened in" on business conversations, and this one was certainly important to the minds of the two chums.
"Did Blair telephone you to-day again about that matter?" Mr. Norwood asked his neighbor.
"No. It was Mr. Stratford himself. Takes an interest in Blair's affairs, you know."
"It really concerns that Bertha Blair who was of so much value to me in the Ellison will case. You remember?" observed Mr. Norwood.
"And it concerns this little freckle-faced child the girls have had around here so much. Actually, if the thing pans out the way it looks, Norwood, that child has got something coming to her."
"She has a good deal coming to her if she can prove she is the daughter of Padriac Haney," said Jessie's father, with vigor.
"You are inclined to take the matter up?"
"I am. I'll do all I can. Blair has no money to risk----"