“Why not?” Merry asked; then before her companion could reply, she exclaimed: “Oh, I understand now! You think we wouldn’t want to discuss club business with you there. You’re wrong, Gerry, my dear! Weespecially dowant you there. Now, don’t ask me any questions. This is a secret club and it wouldn’t do for me to tell you a thing about it until the meeting is called.” And with that explanation the curious Geraldine had to be content.
“Meeting is called to order!” Merry turned to beckon the girl, who, feeling rather like an intruder, had seated herself some distance from the others. “Gerry, come over and sit in Jack’s favorite easy chair,” their hostess said. “Then you’ll be in the circle with the rest of us.”
Geraldine was conscious of the slight flush which she always felt in her cheeks when Jack’s name was mentioned, but she gladly joined the others, sinking into the luxurious depths of a softly upholstered cosy-comfort chair.
“You’ll have to say interesting things to keep me awake,” she laughingly warned them as she snuggled down in it.
“Don’t worry aboutthismeeting not being interesting. It’s going to be a thriller,” the president announced. Whereupon the members all sat up ready to ask a chorus of questions, but Merry pounded on the table before her with her improvised gavel, an ornamented paper-cutter, as she said imperatively: “Silence, if you please! We will now have the roll call. Sleuth Rose, are you present?”
A laughing response: “I am!”
And so on until each had been called. Geraldine was very much awake. “Madame President,” she burst in, “if I’m not too much out of order, will you please tell mewhyyou call these pretty maidens by such a terrible name? Sleuths! Ohoo!” she shuddered. “I thought sleuths were long, lank, stealthy creatures who steal around slums and underworld places trying to find criminals.”
“Well, perhaps some sleuths do,” Merry acknowledged, “butwearen’t quite that desperate.”
Then Peg put in: “O, I say, Merry, have a heart; don’t mystify Gerry any longer. Begin at the beginning and tell her what our club has stood for in the past, and what it will accomplish in the future.”
“How can I reveal what nobody knows?” their president inquired. However, she turned to Geraldine and told how the seven girls who always walked back and forth to school together had formed a clique, which at first they had named Sunnyside Club with “Spread Sunshine” for a motto. “Our Saint Gertrude’s suggestion, you may be sure,” Rose interjected.
“Well, wediddo a great deal to make the children up in the orphanage happy,” Betty Byrd championed as though feeling that the absent member was in some way being maligned.
Bertha Angel agreed with her emphatically: “Of course we did, little one, and we intend to keep it up. Being sleuths won’t in any way keep us from doing good deeds.”
“But what is there to be sleuthing about in this sleepy little town of Sunnyside?” Geraldine wanted to know. “And why do you want to do it if there is?”
“O, we don’t really,” Rose told her. “It’s sort of like taking a dare. The boys have a club which they call ‘C. D. C.,’ and they’re terribly secret about it. They have a mysterious meeting-place, and since we girls aren’t allowed to roam about nights unless our brothers are along to protect us, we never can find out where they meet. We sort of thought it might be in the old Walsley ruin on the East Lake Road. That’s why we asked them to take us there Saturday after that robbery. We thought if thatwastheir secret meeting-place, they would have it fitted up like a clubroom some way, and then of course they wouldn’t want us to visit it. But when they said ‘sure thing,’ they’d take us if we wanted to go, why then we were convinced that’snotwhere they hold their secret meetings.”
Peggy interrupted with: “Maybeyouwere convinced, old dear, but I wasnot. You say we can’t go up the East Lake Road at night when the boys hold their meetings. Of course we can’t, but what’s to hinder us from going up there alone some time in the daylight. If that old man who killed himself haunts the place at all, it wouldn’t be while the sun is shining.”
“Ugh!” Gerry said with a shudder. “Now I believe youaresleuths. Wanting to visit a haunted house! But tell me, what kind of a club is the ‘C. D. C.’?”
“It’s a detective club, and we, that is, Merry, figured out, by putting two and two together, that it means ‘Conan Doyle Club.’ Jack shut her in a closet one day, and before she could let him know she was there, she heard enough to know that he and his friends have tried to find some mystery to solve in Sunnyside, and have decided that there isn’t one, and so they take turns making up mysteries. They read them at these secret meetings and let the others try to figure out clues.”
“Is that why you girls started to be sleuths?” Gerry wanted to know.
Bertha nodded. “Merry heard one of the boys say that an uncle of his in New York, who is a lawyer, had written about a famous girl detective, and the others scoffed at the very idea. They said they couldn’t imaginegirlsever solving a mystery, not if they were all like girls in Sunnyside. So, you see,thatwas sort of a dare, and we made up our mind we wouldfinda mystery and solve it, and then crow about it; but the joke is, we haven’t found a mystery!”
Merry continued with: “Peggy and Doris were a committee of two to find one, and they were to make their report last Saturday, but——”
“But nothing,” Peg interrupted, “you know we were so busy planning that impromptu skating party out at the Drexel Lodge we didn’t have time to call a meeting.”
“Well, if we had called one,” the president persisted, “you girls wouldn’t have had a mystery to present.”
“Wouldn’t we, though?” Peg’s eyes fairly glistened. “Doris,nowis the psychological moment, as Miss Preen would say, for springing our find.”
The girls, except Geraldine, gasped. She was yet too mystified to realize the importance of the announcement. They watched Doris, who unstrapped her school books and drew from her history a clipping from a newspaper. “This is from the DorchesterChronicle,” she announced, “and it certainly sounds mysterious to Peg and me.” She looked around at them, deliberately, tantalizing.
“Oh, for goodness sakes, do hurry and read it,” Bertha Angel urged.
“Peg, you read it. You can do it full justice.” Doris passed it over to her fellow-committeeman, who pretended to study it leisurely.
“Peg, if you don’t hurry and tell us, we’ll mob you.” Bertha stood up and seized a pillow from the window seat, holding it threateningly. “Be calm, Sister Sleuth,” Peg said. Then she held the small scrap of paper close to a window as the short afternoon was drawing to a close. “It is headed, ‘Information wanted.’ A man owning a cattle ranch in Arizona has written theChronicleasking that the following letter be given publicity:
“‘Dear Sirs:
“‘My young and pretty sister, Myra, was sent East to be educated. Our parents wanted to get her away from a ne’er-do-well gambler she had met in Douglas. He followed her East and married her. We never heard from her again, but believe she settled in some small community near Dorchester. I am running the ranch, but half of it belongs to Myra, and, as I believe if she is living she must be in need, I want to find her.
“‘(Signed)Caleb K. Cornwall.’”
Peg looked up triumphantly. “There! What do you think ofthatfor a mystery?”
Merry acknowledged that itwasa mystery, of course, but why think the pretty young Myra settled in Sunnyside? “There are at least six small villages within a radius of forty miles,” she reminded them.
“Oh, of course, maybe it isn’t our town,but, also,maybeit is.” Peg was not going to let them lose sight of whatever value there was in the “find” she and Doris had made.
“Oh, how provoking, here come Jack and Alfred! Now we’ll have to adjourn just when the meeting is most interesting. Ssh! Don’t let them hear us talking about it. Let’s meet here again tomorrow afternoon.” Merry said hurriedly.
“But you won’t wantmeto come, will you?” Geraldine asked, very much hoping that they would say that theydidwant her. Nor was she disappointed.
“Why, of course we do, Gerry.” Then Merry exclaimed self-rebukingly: “Howstupidof me! I started to tell in school that Gertrude wanted us to inviteyouto take her place in the ‘S. S. C.’ for the rest of the winter, while she is away, but I remember now, the gong rang, then I forgot and sort of thought Ihadtold you.”
Then Peg asked: “You’d like to be Sleuth Gerry, wouldn’t you?”
How the older girl’s eyes were glowing! “I’d like it more than anything that has ever happened in my life,” she answered them. Then Merry put a finger on her lips and nodded toward the hall door. Doris, taking the hint, exclaimed: “And those dear little orphans will be simply delighted to have a Valentine party. We can fix things up so prettily. I do think——”
The door had opened and Jack sang out: “Our Sunnyside Spreaders, I observe, are holding one of their most commendable meetings. Unlike the ‘C. D. C.’s,’ they have no secrets to hide.” He winked at Alfred, who laughed so understandingly that the observers were led to believe that Geraldine’s brother had also been admitted to the boys’ club. Nor were they wrong.
“How did you like your first day in our country school?” Jack asked Gerry as he crossed to where she sat by the fire and stooped over the blaze to warm his hands.
“O, I loved it!” that maiden frankly confessed; then acknowledged, “It’s really nicer in lots of ways than the Dorchester Seminary.” Then she rose. “We’d better be going, Brother,” she began when the telephone whirred. Merry turned from it to say that the Colonel was in town and would call for them in five minutes.
“Well, we’ll be over tomorrow to plan that Valentine party for the orphans,” Peg called as the girls trooped away. Then the Colonel’s sleigh bells were heard coming up the drive. Just before she left, Geraldine drew Merry to one side to say in a low voice: “Tell the girls howverygrateful I am to them for having taken me in after I had been so unforgivably horrid.”
Merry gave her friend’s hand a loving squeeze. “I thinkweare the ones to ask forgiveness for the prank we played,” she said; then impulsively added: “Let’s besister-friends, shall we?”
Gerry felt the tell-tale flush in her cheeks, but Alfred was calling, “Do hurry, Sister. This isn’t good-bye forever.” And so laughingly they parted.
The next afternoon the girls found Bob waiting near the seminary with the delivery sleigh. Geraldine, for half a moment, was amazed to hear the squeels of delight uttered by her companions as they swarmed up into the straw-covered box part of the cutter.
“This is great!” Merry exclaimed. “How did you happen to do it, Bobbie dear?”
The boy nodded toward his sister, who replied for him: “Bob said he would be returning from Dorchester about this hour, and I asked him to pick us up, like an angel child, so that we could have a longer meeting. It gets dark so early and it takes a full half hour to walk the mile to Merry’s.”
“Sort of a ruddy-looking angel child,” Rose, at the boy’s side, teased him. The round, pleasant face of the boy was always ruddy, but today it was unusually so, partly because of the long drive he had had in the frosty air and partly because of his pleasure at having Rose with him.
Down the wide, snow-covered road they sped, and Geraldine could not but compare this ride with those that were being taken by the pupils of the Dorchester Seminary, where most fashionable turnouts each day awaited the closing hours. But she had to honestly confess that she was having much more fun than she ever had before. Merry smiled across at her and Gerry smiled back, happily recalling the whispered request of the evening before: “Let us be sister-friends, shall we?”
“All out for Merry-dale!” Bob was soon calling as he drew rein in front of the Lee house. Then to the girl at his side he said in a low voice, “I’ll be through at the store at five. May I drive you home?”
“Yes, indeed, and stay to supper,” Rose said brightly, adding as an afterthought: “Gerry and Alfred can go with us, can’t they? Then the Colonel won’t have to come after them.”
“Sure thing,” the good-natured boy replied. “So long!”
“There now,” Merry announced when they were sitting about the fire five minutes later, “we have a good two hours, if nobody interrupts us, and we ought to be able to delve deeply into our mystery. Peg, will you or Doris review the facts in the case?”
“Shouldn’t we call them clues?” Bertha inquired.
“O, I don’t know. I haven’t been a sleuth long enough to be sure about anything,” the president smilingly admitted. Then Doris reminded them that it was a ranchman in Arizona named Caleb K. Cornwall who was searching for a young and pretty sister named Myra, who had married a ne’er-do-well and supposedly had settled in some small community near Dorchester, in New York State.
“Well, Sleuth Bertha, you look wise. What wouldyousuggest that we do first?” Merry had turned toward the tall maiden, whose expression was habitually serious and thoughtful.
“I was just wondering if there is any woman in town named Myra. Our mothers might know, for I suppose this lost person is about their age.”
“How come?” Peg asked. “There is no mention of age in the letter. Merely that she was a young and pretty girl when she was sent East to school.”
“That might have been ten years ago or twenty, thirty, or any number,” Rose reminded them.
“True enough,” Merry conceded. “Wait a moment. Mother is in her sewing-room, I think. I’ll ask her if she ever heard of a woman in Sunnyside named Myra.”
“Won’t she wonder at your asking?” Peg was fearful lest their secret would be divulged.
“No, indeed,” Merry shook her head. “Mums isn’t even remotely curious about what our club is doing. She knows we are holding a meeting, but that’s all.”
In less than ten minutes she was back again with two names written on a magazine cover. “I don’t think these will help us much,” she informed the girls, whose alert attitudes proved their eager interest. “One is Myra Comely. She lives below the tracks and takes in washing. Mother thinks she may be about forty. The other is Myra Ingersol. She lives out on the old Dorchester road. Mother doesn’t just know where, but it’s a farm that makes a specialty of chickens and eggs. The woman makes jelly and sells it, too. That’s really all Mother knows about her. The name is on each jar, Mums says. ‘Myra Ingersol’s Jams,’ like that. We get them from the grocery. You ought to know about them, Bertha.”
“I do,” that maiden replied, “and, what’s more, I know the woman. I’ve been in the store when she brought in her wares. I’ve been trying to picture her, Merry, while you were talking, as having ever been young and pretty, but I just can’t. She is a big-boned, awkward person with red-grey hair drawn back as though it had a weight on it, and sharp blue eyes.” The girl shook her head. “I’m convinced she isnotthe Myra Mr. Cornwall wants to find.”
“How old is the jam person?” Gerry contributed her first inquiry.
“Oh, close to sixty, perhaps, although she may be younger. She’s had a hard life, I judge.”
“We might call them up on the telephone and ask them if they ever lived in Arizona,” Betty Byrd naively suggested. How the others laughed. “Little one,” Bertha remonstrated, “don’t you know that if they ran away from Arizona and are in hiding, so to speak, they would, of course, refuse to tell that it had once been their home. I mean in answer to such an abrupt question as would have to be asked over the ’phone. My suggestion is that we make some legitimate excuse for calling at the homes of the two Myras and finding, if we can, some clues without arousing their suspicion.”
“Hats off to Sleuth Bertha!” Peg sang out. “When and how shall we make the first call?”
Doris leaped up in her eagerness. “If one of the Myras is a washwoman, let’s drive over there tomorrow with the Drexel weekly laundry. Mother said yesterday that the Palace New Method injures the clothes and she wants to find someone to do it by hand.”
“Say, Boy, but we’re in luck!” the slangy member exulted.
“And as for the other Myra,” Rose said, “we might chip together and buy a chicken or two, and that would give us an excuse to visitherfarm.”
“Bravo! Keen idea! Hurray for our Rosebud!” were the exclamations which proved that the suggestion met with general approval.
“But what would we do with two chickens?” round-eyed, the youngest member inquired.
“Eat ’em, little one,” Peg began.
“Not till they’re cooked, I hope,” Gerry laughingly put in.
“Say, fellow-sleuths, I have a peachy idea,” Peg announced. “Let’s get up a Valentine dinner and invite the boys. Saturday’s the fourteenth, and we can make quite a spread of it and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
“Two hens, do you mean?” Rose inquired. A sofa pillow was hurled at her. “You need submerging,” Doris told her.
“How about that Valentine party for the orphans?” Merry asked slyly. “It seems to me one was suggested last night just as the boys came home.”
“Sure thing, we’ll have one, but that will be different. Now, this Valentine party——”
Peg could say no more, for the door had opened and two laughing boys stood there. Merry rose and confronted her brother. “Jack Lee, how long have you been out there in the hall listening to our club doings?”
“Not a fraction of a second, have we, Alf?” he turned to his companion for corroboration. “All I heard is just what you were saying last night, that you are going to give a party for the orphans on Valentine’s day.”
The girls looked still unconvinced, and so Alfred leaped into the breach with, “Here’s proof sufficient, I should think.” He held out his coat sleeve, on which there were frosty snow stars as yet unmelted. “If we’d been long in the house, they would be dewdrops. Is it not so?”
“Verily.” Peg seemed relieved, as did the others, but when the boys had gone into Jack’s study, which adjoined the library, the girls were puzzled to hear laughter that the boys were evidently trying to muffle. Merry put a warning finger on her lips, which meant that they would postpone further discussion until another day.
“Isn’t it keen that we have this whole Friday afternoon off?” Peg pirouetted about on the snowy road in front of the girls. “Now we can carry out all of our plans before dark, if——” She hesitated and Doris continued with: “‘If’—the biggest word in the language. If we can beg, borrow or hire a cutter large enough to take us all out the East Lake Road. Bertha, you’ll have to drive, being our expert horsewoman.”
The girls had lunched at the school and were trooping townwards, having been excused for the afternoon, as none of them happened to be in a play which was to be rehearsed from two to four.
“Here’s another if,” Rose put in. “If the snow wasn’t so deep on the Lake Road, we might all pile in my runabout. I can driveitas skillfully as Bertha can drive her father’s horses.”
“But thereissnow on the roads as soon as you leave town,” Geraldine contributed. “The snow plough hasn’t even reached as far as the Wainright home.”
“Well, let’s go to the Angel grocery first and see if a delivery sleigh can be borrowed, and if not, why then maybe I can inveigle my papa-dear to loan me one of his,” Peg suggested.
This plan was followed, and fifteen minutes later the girls were seated on the bottom of a box sleigh with Bertha and Merry up on the driver’s seat. “Dad needs this fashionable turnout by five o’clock,” Bertha said as she urged the big dapple-grey horse to its briskest trot. “Now, first we are to stop at the Drexels and get the bundle of laundry, I believe.” The driver glanced over her shoulder and Doris nodded in the affirmative. “It’s all done up and waiting.”
Another fifteen minutes and Dapple, having crossed the tracks, turned into a narrow side street where the houses were small, with many evidences of poverty. Merry had found the address in the telephone book, and when the right number was reached, Dapple was brought to a standstill.
“This house looks real neat,” Betty Byrd commented. “Clean white curtains at the windows and a big backyard, and a lot of washing hung out.”
Doris patted their youngest as she approved: “Observation is surely an excellent trait for a sleuth to develop.”
“Won’t our victim think it queer that it takes seven girls to deliver one bundle of wash?” Geraldine paused to inquire as they trooped through the gate.
“What care we?” Merry was already up on the step and turned to knock on the door, when it was opened by a girl of about their own age.
“How do you do, Miss Angel,” she addressed Bertha, whom she knew by sight. “Won’t you all come in?”
They entered a small but spotlessly clean sitting-room and Doris asked, “Is Mrs. Myra Comely here?”
“No, Mother isn’t here just now. Won’t you be seated?”
Doris hesitated. “I—er—wanted to ask her a few questions about—well, about her methods of laundering.”
The girl had a pleasant face and she seemed not at all abashed to have so many of the town’s “aristocracy” calling upon her at once.
“Mother is careful to use nothing that could harm the clothes, if that is what you mean,” she informed them. “I expect her home directly, if you care to wait.” Then, seeing that there were not chairs enough, she excused herself and brought two from the kitchen and placed them for Doris and Bertha.
When they were all seated, Merry, with a meaning glance at her fellow-sleuths which seemed to say, “Wemaybe able to get the information we need from the daughter,” glanced out of the window as she said idly, “We’re having a pleasant winter, aren’t we?”
“Yes, there’s lots more snow in your town, though, than where we came from.” Blue eyes and brown flashed exulting glances at one another.
“Then Sunnyside has not been your home for long?” Merry inquired.
The girl shook her head. “No, we lived in Florida for years, but I was born in Ireland. That was father’s home, but Mother came from—” She hesitated and glanced about apologetically. Every eye was upon her, every ear listening, but of their eager interest the girl could not guess. “I chatter on about my folks as though you’d care to hear where we all came from,” she said.
“O, we do care an awful lot,” Betty Byrd assured her, then, catching a reproving glance from Doris, their youngest wilted and the older girl said: “I think it’s always interesting to hear where people came from, don’t you, Miss——”
“My name is Myra Comely, just as my mother’s is.” Then she added brightly: “Here she is now.” The door opened and a pleasant-faced woman of about forty entered and removed a shawl which she had worn over her head.
“Howdy do,” she said with a smile which included them all.
Doris stepped forward and explained that her mother wished to have her laundry done by hand, and so they had brought it to her. Mrs. Comely thanked her and told about her methods and prices. After that there was nothing for the girls to do but rise, preparing to go. Merry, in a last desperate effort to obtain the information they desired, turned at the door to say, “Your daughter tells us that you are from Ireland. I have always been so interested in that country and hope to visit there some day.”
The woman smiled. “I liked Ireland,” she said. “I was about your age or a little older when I left the States as a bride for that far-away island.”
It was cold out and the door was open. Whatcouldthe girls do to obtain the needed information? Peg plunged in with, “Which state did you come from, Mrs. Comely?” The girls gasped, but, if the woman thought it a strange question, she made no sign of it. “I was born in a little village on the other side of Dorchester. Your laundry will be delivered on Tuesday, Miss Drexel.”
As the girls were driving away. Peg said: “I suppose it was awful of me to come right out with that question, but we just had to know.”
“O, probably sleuths have to ask questions sometimes, although it’s more clever to get information in a round-about way,” Doris said; then asked: “Bertha, how did Myra Comely happen to knowyourname?”
“She trades at our store,” was the reply. “Everyone in town, sooner or later, sees me in there helping Dad. I post his books for him.”
Geraldine felt somewhat shocked. To think thatshewas associating with a girl who sometimes worked in a grocery. The snob in her was not entirely dead, she feared. But shemustkill it! How Jack would scorn her if he knew her thoughts.
They were all in the sleigh and the big horse, Dapple, glad to be again on the move, for the air was snappily cold even though the sun was shining, started toward the Lake Road at his merriest pace. Snowballs flew back at the laughing girls from his heels.
“It’s three now!” Bertha glanced at her wrist watch. “Shall we stop at the old ruin before or after we visit the Ingersol farm?”
The opinions being divided, as was their usual custom they permitted the president to decide, and she said wisely that she thought it more important to visit the farm than it was the ruin, and so they would better go there first.
They were glad when they passed the Inn that Mr. Wiggin or his wife were not in evidence. Mr. Wiggin was so garrulous that, if he saw any of the boys in town, he would ask what the girls had been doing out that way alone.
Betty Byrd held fast to Doris as they turned into the side wood road which was a shortcut to the old Dorchester highway.
“Skeered, little one?” the older girl smiled down at her.
“Well, sort of,” the younger girl confessed. “This is where that old man was robbed, and——”
“O, fudge,” Peg sang out. “Forget it! That was the first holdup that ever occurred around here, and probably will be the last.”
“Where is the Welsley farm?” Geraldine inquired after a time.
“Beyond that tall pine-tree hedge,” Merry indicated with a wave of her fur-lined glove. “You’ll see the crumbling cupulo in a second.”
The girls gazed intently at the little they could see of the house as they passed the long high hedge.
“I don’t believe the boys come way out here for their meetings,” Bertha, the sensible, remarked when they had turned into the old Dorchester road.
“In fact, I don’t believe they could, much of the time, because of the snow drifts. I think if we want to find where their clubrooms are, we’ll have to look somewhere nearer home.”
A moment later Peg called: “There it is! See the name on that signboard, ‘The Ingersol Chicken Farm,’ and under it, ‘Jams and jellies a specialty.’”
They turned in at a wide gate in the picket fence and found themselves in a large dooryard in front of a substantially built white farmhouse. In the back was an orchard and long rows of berry bushes and at the side were many chicken runs wired in.
A tall, angular woman, wearing a man’s coat and hat, appeared from a barn carrying a basket of eggs. The girls climbed from the sleigh and walked toward her. “Peg, suppose you do the talking this time,” Merry suggested, “but use diplomacy. Don’t plunge right in.”
“No,thanks!” That maid shook her head vehemently. “It’s up to you, Merry.”
And so their president advanced with her friendliest smile. “Mrs. Ingersol?”
The woman, without a visible change of features, acknowledged that to be her name, and so Merry said: “We would like to buy a couple of chickens of about two or three pounds each.” This surely sounded innocent enough. The woman was most business-like. To the surprise of the girls, she took from her coat pocket a whistle and blew upon it a shrill blast. Instantly, or almost so, a long, lank youth appeared out of a nearby chicken yard and called, “What yo’ want, Ma?”
“Two threes fixed,” was the terse reply. Then to the girls: “Come along in and get yerselves warm. Beastly cold winter we’ve been havin’, tho’ it’s let up a spell.”
The girls followed the woman into a large, clean kitchen. A fire snapped and crackled in the big wood stove. There was a long wood box near it which served as a window seat, and four of the girls ranged along on it, the others sat on white pine chairs, stiff and just alike.
The woman eyed them with an expression which revealed neither interest nor curiosity as to who they were. The girls found it harder to ask questions of this adamant sort of a creature than they had of Myra Comely. But she it was who broke the ice by asking, “Do you all live in Sunnyside?”
Merry nodded, smiling her brightest. “Yes, we’re all from town.” Then she hurried to take advantage of the opening. “Have you been here long, Mrs. Ingersol?”
“Yep, born clost to here. Never been out’n the state in my life. Hep, my son, he-uns was born here and ain’t so much as been out o’ thecounty. Don’t reckon he’s like to, as he’s set on marryin’ a gal down the road a piece.”
The woman turned abruptly and went through a door. The girls looked at each other tragically. “That didn’t take long, but, alas and alak for us, no clues!”
Doris put a finger on her lips and nodded toward the door, which was again opening. The woman reappeared, divested of her masculine outer garments. She had on a dull red flannel dress, severely plain, and a white apron, the sort farmer’s wives reserve for company wear. She was carrying a dish of cookies and an open jar of jam. She actually smiled as she placed them on the spotless white wood table. “Help yerselves,” she said hospitably. “Here’s a knife to spread on the jam with. An’ there’s a tin dipper over by the sink if yo’ need water to help wash ’em down.”
When they were again in the sleigh, and a safe distance from the house, the girls laughed merrily. “Mrs. Ingersol’s kernel is sweeter than her husk,” Bertha remarked. Then added: “Girls, we’ll have to go home on this road and leave our visit to the old ruin until some other time. It’s four-thirty now.”
“Well, we’ve got our chickens anyway,” Merry said as she held the brown paper bundle aloft. “Kate said we may have her kitchen tomorrow from two o’clock on for the rest of the day. Now let’s plan what else we must get. I’ll tell Jack to invite the boys to our Valentine dinner. Won’t they be surprised when they think we were planning it for the orphans?”
On Saturday afternoon, when Geraldine was leaving Colonel Wainright’s home at about one-thirty, she saw Danny O’Neil working at the summer house, where he was replacing some of the lattice work which had broken under the heavy weight of snow. Suddenly she remembered something Doris had said when they had been planning the Valentine dinner: “I wish Danny O’Neil could be invited, but he probably wouldn’t come. He thinks that some of us consider him merely a servant.”
The city girl could not understandwhyDoris wanted the boy, and she realized that it washer ownattitude that was keeping him away. Then she remembered what Mrs. Gray had told her about his great loneliness for the mother who had so recently died. Geraldine also knew what it was to be motherless. Then, once again, she felt the sweet influence of real sympathy, and, turning back, she called: “Danny O’Neil, we girls are giving a surprise Valentine party at Merry Lee’s home tonight at six, and Doris particularly wants you to come with Alfred.”
Then, before the amazed lad could reply, the girl turned and hurried down the walk to where her brother waited in a cutter to drive her into town. On the way she told Alfred what she had said to Danny, and she asked him to persuade him to accept since Doris so wanted him.
“Sure thing, I will!” the boy replied heartily. “He’s a mighty nice chap. Lots of talent, too, I should say. I was up in his room last night for a while. He was carving book ends. I thought it mighty clever work.”
Geraldine, upon reaching the Lee home, found the other girls there before her. The big, cheerful kitchen swarmed with them. They had agreed to wear white dresses with red sashes, and red ribbon butterfly bows in their hair, but their aprons were of all colors.
Merry was giving orders. “Here, Doris, you crack these walnuts, will you? Bertha is going to make one of her famous nut cakes.” Then she interrupted herself to say, “Oh, Gerry, hello! You’ve arrived just in time to—to—” She looked around to see what the newcomer could do.
“Send her over here to help me pare potatoes,” Peg sang out. But Merry saw, by the almost startled expression in the city girl’s face, that she would be more apt to cut her fingers than the humble vegetable, and so she replied: “No, Peg, that’syourwork. Gerry shall help me set the table.” Then she apologized: “I’m sorry to do the pleasantest thing myself, but no one else knows where the dishes and things are.”
“Oh, it’sallpleasant,” Bertha commented, “when we’re all together.”
“What’s our Rosebud doing?” Gerry sauntered across the kitchen to the stove where their prettiest member stood stirring something in a pot. The “our” proved how completely the city girl felt that she was one of them.
“Making Valentine candy,” that maiden replied. “This is a sort of a white fudge. It’s ever so creamy when it’s whipped. Just delicious with chopped nuts in it. We’re going to make heart shapes, then dip them in red frosting.”
For an hour they all worked busily at their appointed tasks; then Merry and Gerry called the others into the dining-room to see the table.
“Oh-oo, how pretty!”
“Girls, will you look at the red ribbons running from that heart-shaped box in the middle to each place! What’s the idea, Merry?”
“You’ll know later,” their president laughingly informed them. “That’s a surprise for everybody which Jack and I planned last night.”
Then Geraldine exclaimed: “Why, Merry, you have made a mistake, haven’t you? There are sixteen places instead of fifteen.”
“Nary a mistake,” Doris replied. “We have invited that pretty Myra Comely and she has accepted.” Then before the astonished Geraldine could say, “What? Invited a washwoman’s daughter,” Doris was hurrying on to explain how it had happened. “Myra brought our laundry home this morning, and we had quite a long visit. Merry was over at my house, and we both liked her ever so much, and when she said that she had never been to a party, why we just invited her to ours. I hopeyoudon’t mind.” There was a shade of anxiety in the voice of Doris as she glanced at the taller girl, whose expression was hard to read.
There was indeed a struggle going on in Geraldine’s heart, but good sense won out. She slipped an arm affectionately about her friend as she said: “Anyone who is good enough foryouto associate with is good enough for me!” The other girls had drifted back to the kitchen to resume their tasks, and these two were alone. “Doris, dear,” Gerry said, “I told your friend, Danny O’Neil, I hoped he would come, and I made Alfred promise to bring him.”
How the pretty face of Doris brightened. “That was mighty nice of you!” she exclaimed. “Now Iknowhe will come. I telephoned him early this morning, but he seemed to think you wouldn’t care to associate with him; that is, not socially.”
Then an imperative voice called from the kitchen: “Say, you two ornaments in there, come on out and help with this chicken.”
At six o’clock all was in readiness, and the seven girls, divested of aprons, waited the ringing of the door bell with cheeks as rosy as their ribbons. They had the house quite to themselves, as Mrs. Angel had obligingly invited Merry’s parents to dinner and Katie had been only too glad to spend the afternoon and evening with her friends below the tracks.
“Here comes somebody. Who do you suppose will arrive first?” Merry had just said when the front door burst open and Jack ushered in Myra Comely. Merry had asked her brother to bring her, but, almost before the door had closed, the bell was jingling, and all of the others arrived at once.
In the whirl of excitement that followed, with everybody welcoming everybody else, no one noticed that Danny had drawn Doris to one side and was giving her a package. “It’s a valentine that I made for you. Book-ends that I carved,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t open it here.”
Geraldine glanced in their direction just as Doris lifted sweet, brown eyes and smiled her appreciation at the boy. But before she could puzzle about the meaning of it, Jack had taken her hand and was leading her into the living-room, which was festooned with strings of red paper hearts. Jokingly he began: “Fair Queen o’ Hearts, I’m the Jack o’ Hearts, won’t you please tell me where you’ve hidden the tarts?”
What a throng of them there was as they swarmed into the brightly lighted living-room.
“Don’t sit down, anybody,” Merry warned. “The party-part is going to start right away. But first you have to draw for partners.” Then she explained that she would pass a basket to the boys that would contain halves of valentines, and that at the same time Gerry would pass one with the other halves to the girls. “You are each to take one, and the two who have the parts of one valentine are to be partners. The girls are to stand still and the boys to do the hunting.”
For ten merry minutes boys darted about matching halves of valentines. The result was rather disappointing to several of them, for Rose wasnotfor Bob, and Jack drew Myra Comely, while Gerry, of all the queer tricks of Fate, was Danny O’Neil’s partner; but they took it in good part, and when Merry put an appropriate song record on the victrola they all marched out to the dining-room. The girls felt quite repaid for their efforts when they heard the sincere exclamation of approval which the boys uttered. Then Merry, as hostess-in-chief, explained that each couple was to select seats and that they should do this thoughtfully, as the ribbons had at the other ends prophecies as to their future. There were tiny bows on the ribbons for girls.