"She"s in there, too. She didn"t stop eating."
At that Amy began laughing hysterically. "She can"t eat the snakes, can she?" she shrieked at last. "But maybe they"ll eat her. How many snakes are there, Jess?"
"Do you suppose I stopped to count them? Dozens, maybe. They came pouring out of that dark stairway----"
"Where _is_ the child?" demanded Amy, who had come up upon the porch, and was now peering in through the doorway.
The sounds from inside, like the beating of a flail, continued. Amy craned her head around the door jamb to see.
"Goodness, mercy, child!" she shouted. "Look out what you are doing!
You will get bitten!"
The noise of the thrashing stopped. At least, the larger part of the noise. Henrietta came to the door with the stick that Jessie had dropped in her hand.
"I fixed "em," she said calmly. "I just hate snakes. I always kill them black ones. They ain"t got no poison. And I shut the door so if there"s any more upstairs they won"t come down. You can come back to dinner."
"Well, you darling!" gasped Jessie.
Her chum leaned against the door jamb while peal after peal of laughter shook her. She could just put out her hands and make motions at the freckled little girl.
"She--she--she----"
"For pity"s sake, Amy Drew!" exclaimed Jessie. "You"ll have a fit, or something."
"She--she didn"t even--stop--chewing!" Amy got out at last.
"Bless her heart! She"s the bravest little thing!" Jessie declared, shakingly. "We two great, big girls should be ashamed."
"I guess you ain"t so much acquainted with snakes as I am," Henrietta said, sliding onto the bench again. "But I certainly am glad it wasn"t Carter"s ha"nt."
"But," cried Amy, still weak from laughing, "it _was_ the ghost. Of course, those snakes had a home upstairs there. Probably in the chimney. And every time anybody came here to picnic and built a fire, they got warmed up and started moving about. Thusly, the ghost stories about the Carter house."
"Your explanation is ingenious, at any rate," admitted Jessie. "Ugh!
They are still writhing. Are you sure they are dead, Henrietta?"
"That"s the trouble with snakes," said the child. "They don"t know enough to keep still when they"re dead-ed. I smashed their heads good for "em."
But Amy could not bear to sit down to the bench again until she had taken the stick and poked the dead but still writhing snakes out of the house. The rain was diminishing now and the thunder and lightning had receded into the distance. The two older girls ate very little of the luncheon they had brought. It was with much amazement that they watched Henrietta absorb sandwiches, cake, eggs, and fruit. She did a thorough job.
"Isn"t she the bravest little thing?" Jessie whispered to her chum.
"Did you ever hear the like?"
"I guess that girl we saw run away with, was her cousin all right,"
said Amy. "How she did fight!"
At that statement Jessie was reminded of the thing that had been puzzling her for some days. She began asking questions about Bertha, how she looked, how old she was, and how she was dressed.
"She"s just my cousin. She is as old as you girls, I guess, but not so awful old," Henrietta said. "I don"t know what she had on her. She ain"t as pretty as you girls. Guess there ain"t none of our family real pretty," and Henrietta shook her head with reflection.
"What happened to her that she wanted to leave that dreadful fat woman?" asked Amy, now, as well as her chum, taking an interest in the matter.
"There wasn"t a thing happened to her that I know of," said Henrietta, shaking her head again. "But by the way that lady talked it would happen to her if she got hold of Bertha again."
"How dreadful," murmured Jessie, looking at her chum.
"I don"t see how we can help the girl," said Amy. "She has been shut up some place, of course. If I could just think who that skinny woman is--or who she looks like. But how she can drive a car!"
"I think we can do something," Jessie declared. "I"ve had my head so full of radio that I haven"t thought much about this poor child"s cousin and her trouble."
"What will you do?" asked Amy.
"Tell daddy. He ought to be able to advise."
"That"s a fact," agreed Amy, her eyes twinkling. "He is quite a good lawyer. Of course, not so good as Mr. Wilbur Drew. But he"ll do at a pinch."
CHAPTER X
THE PRIZE IDEA
When the two girls paddled back up the lake after their adventure at the old Carter house, Henrietta squatted in the middle of the canoe and seemed to enjoy the trip immensely.
"I seen these sort of boats going up and down the lake, and they look pretty. Me and Charlie Foley and some of the other boys at Dogtown made a raft. But Mr. Foley busted it with an ax. He said we had no business using the coal-cellar door and Mrs. Foley"s bread-mixing board. So we didn"t get to go sailing," observed the freckle-faced child.
Almost everything the child said made Amy laugh. Nevertheless, like her chum, Amy felt keenly the pathos of the little girl"s situation.
Perhaps with Amy Drew this interest went no farther than sympathy, whereas Jessie was already, and before this incident, puzzling her mind regarding what might be done to help Henrietta and improve her situation.
The girls paddled the canoe in to a broken landing just below the scattered shacks of Dogtown, and Henrietta went ash.o.r.e. It was plain that she would have enjoyed riding farther in the canoe.
"If you see us come down this way again, honey," Amy said, "run down here to the sh.o.r.e and we will take you aboard."
"If Mrs. Foley will let you," added Jessie.
"I dunno what Mrs. Foley will say about the strawberries. I told her I"d bring home some if she"d let me go over there. And here I come home without even the bucket."
"It is altogether too wet to pick wild strawberries," Jessie said. "I wanted some myself. But we shall have to go another day. And you can find your bucket then, Henrietta."
The chums drove their craft up the lake and in half an hour sighted the Norwood place and its roses. Everything ash.o.r.e was saturated, of course. And in one place the girls saw that the storm had done some damage.
A grove of tall trees at the head of the lake and near the landing belonging to the Norwood place was a landmark that could be seen for several miles and from almost any direction on this side of Bonwit Boulevard. As the canoe swept in toward the dock Amy cried aloud:
"Look! Look, Jess! No wonder we thought that thunder was so sharp. It struck here."
"The thunder struck?" repeated Jessie, laughing. "I _am_ thunderstruck, then. You mean----Oh, Amy! That beautiful great tree!"
She saw what had first caught Amy"s eye. One of the tallest of the trees was split from near its top almost to the foot of the trunk. The white gash looked like a wide strip of paper pasted down the stick of ruined timber.