"The what?"

"The Negontisks."

"Why, no, child. Of what are you dreaming? I never saw a Negontisk, let alone living with them. Heard of them though. Please explain."

She bounced down into one of the overstuffed chairs with a little sigh of "Oh! What delicious comfort! You don't know how strange it is to live like an Eskimo. It's trying at times, too."

It took a great deal of explaining for Lucile to make the reasons for her questions clear to the stranger. In the meantime, Florence had an opportunity to study their visitor.

"Very small, not weighing over ninety pounds, very vivacious, decidedly American and considerably older than we are," was her final a.n.a.lysis.

"Why! My dear!" the little lady cried when Lucile had explained. "You may put your mind quite at ease. Besides yourselves I am positively the only person on the island. What's more," she smiled, "I have in my igloo oodles and oodles of food, enough for all of us for six months to come."

The three girls fairly gasped in their relief and delight. It was with the greatest difficulty that they refrained from embracing the visitor.

"I suppose," said the stranger, "that you would like to know how it comes about that I am living here on this island all by myself; and, above all things, in an igloo. Well, you see, my uncle owns this island. He is a retired Arctic trader. For twenty years he lived on the coast of the Arctic--made a huge fortune in furs and whale bone. Then he came back to the city to live.

"Well, you see," she sighed after a pause for breath, "he had lived in igloos on the Arctic coast for so long that he wasn't satisfied with the cave he lived in on the sh.o.r.es, in the noisy city. So what does he do but buy this little island and have a wonderful little igloo built beneath one of its sand dunes?

"Of course he doesn't live in his igloo all the time; just comes over when he wishes to. This winter he is spending in Florida so he lent his igloo to me.

"I graduated from the university last year. And I wanted to write a book, a book about the vanishing race--the Eskimo. Sort of an Eskimo Ramona, don't you know.

"I had never been in Alaska but my uncle had told me about it. Nights and nights he talked about nothing else, so I knew enough to make a book. All I needed was the atmosphere. I thought I could get that best by coming out here and living in his igloo all by myself, paddling about in a kiak, fishing through the ice and all that. So that," she laughed, "is how I came to be here."

The three girls stared at her with looks of wonderment in which was mingled not a little joy. Had she been a fairy come down from some magic kingdom to render them a great service she could hardly have been more welcome.

"Oh!" she cried, bouncing up from her chair, "You shall all go to my igloo. We will have dinner together there and--and why don't you bring along a few of your things, prepared to stay all night? You'll hardly be leaving to-night. No, of course you won't. Ice won't let you."

"It's not alone the ice," said Florence soberly. "We don't know how to start our motor."

"Oh! Those motors! There now!" she exclaimed "I've never told you my name. It's Marie Neighbor. What are yours?"

The girls told her.

"Motors are a real bother," she said, returning to her original subject.

"Uncle has had six or eight of them in all, on cars, yachts and all that.

Not one of them was like any other one. I puzzled my poor old head nearly off over them but I always succeeded in making them go. They're worse when there's no gas. Once I tried a pint of ether and some moth b.a.l.l.s instead of gas. That came near being my last experiment. The cylinder exploded. Perhaps I can help you with your engine. Let's have a look."

Florence led the way to the engine room and there switched on a light.

Marie studied the motor for a moment.

"But my dear," she exclaimed at last, "this wire should be fastened there and that one here. You have them crossed. That will never do. Hope you haven't ruined your batteries. But never you mind, I have a set down at the igloo."

"Now about the timer. That screw's loose there. Off time of course. Why, there's nothing the matter with the motor; not really. We'll have it going in a moment."

She gave the balance wheel a turn. There followed a sucking sound. A second turn brought a similar result; the third elicited a loud explosion and the fourth threw the engine into such a spasm of coughing as set the whole yacht a-tremble.

"There you are," she exclaimed triumphantly. "I told you there wasn't anything the matter." She touched a lever. The engine stopped. Then she reached for a handful of waste with which to clean her dainty fingers.

"Now," she said, "shall we go over to the igloo? I think the wind is changing. The ice may be going out to-night. In that case you may be wishing to leave in the morning. The yacht will be all right here. No one about and no chance for her to go out of the river. Throw a line out and tie her to the sh.o.r.e. That'll make her doubly safe."

Delighted with this strange and efficient hostess, the girls went about the task of making the ship snug, then, having each gathered up a small bundle of clothing, went ash.o.r.e.

"By the way," said Marie, "if you don't mind I think I'd like to go back to the city with you. I'll work my pa.s.sage as chief engineer."

"That would be splendid!" said Florence enthusiastically. "I've been worrying about the engine. We might get it going and not be able to stop it."

"And might stop it and not get it going again," laughed Marie. "Well, I'm glad that's arranged. A friend had promised to come after me, but I was talking to him night before last and he told me his boat had sprung a leak. Didn't think he could come."

"You were talking with him?" cried Marian.

"Yes, radio, don't you know. Oh! I didn't tell you. I have a radiophone for short-distance work. Uncle insisted on my having it; thought I wouldn't be safe without it. When I wish to talk to sh.o.r.e all I have to do is to hoist up my two portable towers, key up my instrument and start right in jabbering away. I have the wireless too, and can talk to my uncle way down in Florida."

Florence took a long breath. "So this," she told herself, "is the explanation of the phantom wireless."

"By the way," said Marie, "your friends must be anxious about you. Of course they must be. I'll get my little talking machine going as soon as we are at the igloo and you may tell them all your troubles; also a.s.sure them you'll be home to-morrow or the next day."

"Oh! How can we thank you?" cried Lucile.

"Don't have to," laughed their hostess. "It doesn't cost me anything and I'm to get a free pa.s.sage home for it."

"Talking about things being free," she said pointing to the splendid little evergreens all about them. "See all those trees! They really should be thinned out. They're free for the asking. Yet there are ten thousand homes in the city where there will be no Christmas tree this year. What do you say we cut down two or three hundred of them and take them along? We can play Santa to that many families anyway."

"I think it's a fine idea," said Lucile.

"So do I! So do I," said the others in unison.

"Well then that's all settled. And now for a lark. Watch out; here's the entrance to the igloo. Just take a look down, then we'll get up the towers and start talking across empty s.p.a.ce to the poor tired old city,"

laughed Marie.

CHAPTER XVI AN UNEXPECTED WELCOME

"It's an exact reproduction of an igloo!" exclaimed Lucile.

The three girls, following the example of their hostess, had dropped through a hole some three feet square, had poised for an instant upon a board landing, to drop a second three feet and find themselves in a small square room. Leaving this room, they had gone scooting along a narrow pa.s.sageway, to drop on their knees and crawl through a circular opening into a room some twenty feet square.

"Why!" exclaimed their hostess, "have you seen an igloo somewhere?"

Lucile smiled. "Marian and I spent a year on the Arctic coast of Alaska and Marian has lived most of her life in Nome on Behring Sea."

"Why then," Marie Neighbor's face was a study, "then I'm just a--a--what do you call it? a chechecko, I guess--beside you."