The Campfire Girls of Roselawn; Or, a Strange Message from the Air Read online

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  THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS OF ROSELAWN

  THE

  CAMPFIRE GIRLS

  OF ROSELAWN

  OR

  A STRANGE MESSAGE

  FROM THE AIR

  BY MARGARET PENROSE

  NEW YORK

  THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING CO

  PUBLISHERS

  Copyright

  By

  The Goldsmith Publishing Co.

  Printed in U. S. A.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I. They Hear a Voice 1 II. A Road Mystery 11 III. Interest in Radio Spreads 19 IV. Stringing the Aerials 29 V. The Freckle-Faced Girl 39 VI. Something Coming 49 VII. The Canoe Trip 57 VIII. Carter's Ghost 66 IX. Henrietta Is Valiant 75 X. The Prize Idea 82 XI. Belle Ringold 89 XII. The Glorious Fourth 96 XIII. The Bazaar 106 XIV. Jealousy 113 XV. Can It Be Possible? 120 XVI. Spotted Snake, the Witch 127 XVII. Broadcasting 134 XVIII. A Mystery of the Ether 143 XIX. A Puzzling Circumstance 149 XX. Something Doing at the Stanleys' 156 XXI. A Great To-Do 163 XXII. Silk! 170 XXIII. Darry's Big Idea 178 XXIV. A Radio Trick 187 XXV. Just in Time 193

  THEY HEAR A VOICE

  THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS OF ROSELAWN

  CHAPTER I

  THEY HEAR A VOICE

  "Oh, it's wonderful, Amy! Just wonderful!"

  The blonde girl in the porch swing looked up with shining eyes andflushed face from her magazine to look at the dark girl who swungcomposedly in a rocking chair, her nimble fingers busy with theknitting of a shoulder scarf. The dark girl bobbed her head inagreement.

  "So's the Sphinx, but it's awfully out of date, Jess."

  Jessie Norwood looked offended. "Did I ever bring to your attention,Miss Drew----"

  "Why don't you say 'drew' to my attention?" murmured the other girl.

  "Because I perfectly loathe puns," declared Jessie, with energy.

  "Good! Miss Seymour's favorite pupil. Go on about the wonder beast,Jess."

  "It is no beast, I'd have you understand. And it is right up todate--the very newest thing."

  "My dear Jessie," urged her chum, gayly, "you have tickled mycuriosity until it positively wriggles! What is the wonder?"

  "Radio!"

  "Oh! Wireless?"

  "Wireless telephone. Everybody is having one."

  "Grandma used to prescribe sulphur and molasses for that."

  "Do be sensible for once, Amy Drew. You and Darry----"

  "That reminds me. Darry knows all about it."

  "About what?"

  "The radio telephone business. You know he was eighteen months on adestroyer in the war, even if he was only a kid. You know," and Amygiggled, "he says that if women's ages are always elastic, it was nocrime for him to stretch his age when he enlisted. Anyhow, he knowsall about the 'listening boxes' down in the hold. And that is all thisradio is."

  "Oh, but Amy!" cried Jessie, with a toss of her blond head, "that isold stuff. The radio of to-day is very different--much improved.Anybody can have a receiving set and hear the most wonderful thingsout of the air. It has been brought to every home."

  "'Have you a little radio in your home?'" chuckled Amy, her fingersstill flying.

  "Dear me, Amy, you are so difficult," sighed her chum.

  "Not at all, not at all," replied the other girl. "You can understandme, just as e-e-easy! But you know, Jess, I have to act as a brake foryour exuberance."

  "Don't care," declared Jessie. "I'm going to have one."

  "If cook isn't looking, bring one for me, too," suggested theirrepressible joker.

  "I mean to have a radio set," repeated Jessie quite seriously. "Itsays in this magazine article that one can erect the aerials and all,oneself. And place the instrument. I am going to do it."

  "Sure you can," declared Amy, with confidence. "If you said you couldrebuild the Alps--and improve on them--I'd root for you, honey."

  "I don't want any of your joking," declared Jessie, with emphasis. "Iam in earnest."

  "So am I. About the Alps. Aunt Susan, who went over this year, saysthe traveling there is just as rough as it was before the war. Shedoesn't see that the war did any good. If I were you, Jess, andthought of making over the Alps----"

  "Now, Amy Drew! Who said anything about the Alps?"

  "I did," confessed her chum. "And I was about to suggest that, if youtackle the job of rebuilding them, you flatten 'em out a good bit soAunt Susan can get across them easier."

  "Amy Drew! Will you ever have sense?"

  "What is it, a conundrum? Something about 'Take care of the dollarsand the cents will take care of themselves?'"

  "I am talking about installing a radio set in our house. And if youdon't stop funning and help me do it, I won't let you listen in, sothere!"

  "I'll be good," proclaimed Amy at once. "I enjoy gossip just as muchas the next one. And if you can get it out of the air----"

  "It has to be sent from a broadcasting station," announced Jessie.

  "There's one right in this town," declared Amy, with vigor.

  "No!"

  "Yes, I tell you. She lives in the second house from the corner ofBreen Street, the yellow house with green blinds----"

  "Now, Amy! Listen here! Never mind local gossips. They only broadcastneighborhood news. But we can get concerts and weather reports andlectures----"

  Amy painfully writhed in her chair at this point. "Say not so, Jess!"she begged. "Get lectures enough at school--and from dad, once in awhile, when the dear thinks I go too far."

  "I think you go too far most of the time," declared her chum primly."Nobody else would have the patience with you that I have."

  "Except Burd Alling," announced Amy composedly. "He thinks I am allright."

  "Pooh! Whoever said Burd Alling had good sense?" demanded Jessie. "Nowlisten!" She read a long paragraph from the magazine article. "Yousee, it is the very latest thing to do. Everybody is doing it. And itis the most wonderful thing!"

  Amy had listened with more seriousness. She could be attentive andappreciative if she wished. The paragraph her chum read wasinteresting.

  "Go ahead. Read some more," she said. "Is that all sure enough so,Jess?"

  "Of course it is so. Don't you see it is printed here?"

  "You mustn't believe everything you see in print, Jess. Mygrandfather was reported killed in the Civil War, and he came homeand pointed out several things they had got wrong in the newspaperobituary--especially the date of his demise. Now this----"

  "I am going to get a boo
k about it, and that will tell us just what todo in getting a radio set established."

  "I'll tell you the first thing to do," scoffed Amy. "Dig down intoyour pocketbook."

  "It won't cost much. But I mean to have a good one."

  "All right, dear. I am with you. Never let it be said I deserted Poll.What is the first move?"

  "Now, let me see," murmured Jessie, staring off across the sunfleckedlawn.

  The Norwood estate was a grand place. The house, with its surroundingporches, stood in Roselawn upon a knoll with several acres of slopingsod surrounding it and a lovely little lake at the side. There was along rose garden on either side of the house, and groups of summerroses in front. Roses, roses, roses, everywhere about the place! TheNorwoods all loved them.

  But there were more roses in this section of the pretty town of NewMelford, and on that account many inhabitants of the place had gotteninto the habit of calling the estates bordering the boulevard by thename of Roselawn. It was the Roselawn district, for every lawn wasdotted with roses, red, pink, white, and yellow.

  The Norwoods were three. Jessie, we put first because to us she is ofthe most importance, and her father and mother would agree. Being theonly child, it is true they made much of her. But Jessie Norwood wastoo sweet to be easily spoiled.

  Her father was a lawyer in New York, which was twenty miles from NewMelford. The Norwoods had some wealth, which was good. They hadculture, which was better. And they were a very loving andcompanionable trio, which was best.

  Across the broad, shaded boulevard was a great, rambling, old house,with several broad chimneys. It had once been a better classfarmstead. Mr. Wilbur Drew, who was likewise a lawyer, had rebuilt andadded to and improved and otherwise transformed the farmhouse until itwas an attractive and important-looking dwelling.

  In it lived the lawyer and his wife, his daughter, Amy, and DarringtonDrew, when he was home from college. This was another happy family--ina way. Yet they were just a little different from the Norwoods. Buttruly "nice people."

  When Amy Drew once gave her mind to a thing she could be earnestenough. The little her chum had read her from the magazine articlebegan to interest her. Besides, whatever Jessie was engaged in must ofnecessity hold the attention of Amy.

  She laid aside the knitting and went to sit beside Jessie in theswing. They turned back to the beginning of the article and read itthrough together, their arms wound about each other in immemorialschoolgirl fashion.

  Of course, as Amy pointed out, they were not exactly schoolgirls now.They were out of school--since two days before. The long summervacation was ahead of them. Time might hang idly on their hands. So itbehooved them to find something absorbing to keep their attentionkeyed up to the proper pitch.

  "Tell you what," Amy suggested. "Let's go down town to the bookstoreand see if they have laid in a stock of this radio stuff. We want oneor two of the books mentioned here, Jess. We are two awfully smartgirls, I know; we will both admit it. But some things we havepositively got to learn."

  "Silly," crooned Jessie, patting her chum on the cheek. "Let's go.We'll walk. Wait till I run and see if Momsy doesn't want somethingfrom down town."

  "We won't ask Mrs. Drew that question, for she will be pretty sure towant a dozen things, and I refuse--positively--to be a dray horse. I'have drew' more than my share from the stores already. Cyprian in thecar can run the dear, forgetful lady's errands."

  Jessie scarcely listened to this. She ran in and ran out again. Shewas smiling.

  "Momsy says all she wants is two George Washington sundaes, to bebrought home in two separate parcels, one blonde and one brunette,"and she held up half a dollar before Amy's eyes.

  "Your mother, as I have always said, Jess, is of the salt of theearth. And she is well sugared, too. Let me carry the half dollar,honey. You'll swallow it, or lose it, or something. Aren't to betrusted yet with money," and Amy marched down the steps in the lead.

  She always took the lead, and usually acted as though she were themoving spirit of the pair. But, really, Jessie Norwood was the morepractical, and it was usually her initiative that started the chums ona new thing and always her "sticktoitiveness" that carried themthrough to the end.

  Bonwit Boulevard, beautifully laid out, shaded with elms, with a grasspath in the middle, two oiled drives, and with a bridle path on oneside, was one of the finest highways in the state. At this hour of theafternoon, before the return rush of the auto-commuters from the city,the road was almost empty.

  The chums chatted of many things as they went along. But Jessie cameback each time to radio. She had been very much interested in thewonder of it and in the possibility of rigging the necessary aerialsand setting up a receiving set at her own house.

  "We can get the books to tell us how to do it, and we can buy the wirefor the antenna to-day," she said.

  "'Antenna'! Is it an insect?" demanded Amy. "Sounds crawly."

  "Those are the aerials----"

  "Listen!" interrupted Amy Drew.

  A sound--a shrill and compelling voice--reached their ears. Amy's handclutched at Jessie's arm and held her back. There was nobody in sight,and the nearest house was some way back from the road.

  "What is it?" murmured Jessie.

  "Help! He-e-elp!" repeated the voice, shrilly.

  "Radio!" muttered Amy, sepulchrally. "It is a voice out of the air."

  There positively was nobody in sight. But Jessie Norwood waspractical. She knew there was a street branching off the boulevardjust a little way ahead. Besides, she heard the throbbing of anautomobile engine.

  "Help!" shrieked the unknown once more.

  "It is a girl," declared Jessie, beginning to run and half draggingAmy Drew with her. "She is in trouble! We must help her!"

  A ROAD MYSTERY