it inboard, knocking off
the old bonnet to reveal Henrietta's freckled little face. The cloak
and the hump under it were likewise torn off and went sailing away on
the current.

"For pity's sake, Henrietta!" gasped Jessie.

"Yes'm," said the child composedly. "Did you come to see me?"

"Not expecting to see you in this--this shape," hesitated Jessie.

Amy went off into a gale of laughter. She could not speak for a
minute. Jessie demanded:

"Who are those awful children, Henrietta?"

"Part Foleys, some McGuires, two Swansons, the Costeklo twins, and
Montmorency Shannon," was the literal reply.

"What were they trying to do to you?"

"Drown me," said Henrietta composedly. "But they ain't ever done it
yet. I always manage to get away. I'm cute, I am. But once they most
nearly burned me, and Mrs. Foley stopped _that_. So now they mostly
try to drown the witch."

"'The witch'?" murmured the amazed Jessie.

"Yep. That's me. Spotted Snake, the witch. That's cause I'm so
freckled. It's a great game."

"I should say it was," marveled Jessie, and immediately Amy began to
laugh again. "I don't see how you can, Amy," Jessie complained. "I
think it is really terrible."

"I don't mind it," said Henrietta complacently. "It keeps 'em busy
and out from under their mothers' feet."

"But they shriek and yell so."

"That don't hurt 'em. And there's plenty of outdoors here to yell in.
Where we moved from in town, folks complained of the Foleys because
they made so much noise. But nobody ever complains here in Dogtown."

As Amy said, when she could keep from laughing, it was a great
introduction to Henrietta's home. They went ashore, and Henrietta, who
seemed to have a good deal of influence with the children, ordered two
of the boys to watch the canoe and allow nobody to touch it. Then she
proudly led the way to one of the largest and certainly the most
decrepit looking of all the hovels in Dogtown.

Mrs. Foley, however, was a cheerful disappointment. She was, as Amy
whispered, a "bulgy" person, but her calico wrapper was fairly clean;
and although she sat down and took up her youngest to rock to sleep
while she talked (being too busy a woman to waste any time visiting)
she impressed the girls from Roselawn rather favorably.

"That child is the best young one in the world," Mrs. Foley confessed,
referring to "Spotted Snake, the Witch." "Sometimes I rant at her like
a good one. But she saves me a good bit, and if ever