“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 visit her farm.”
“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.
CHAPTER XX
THE SLEUTHS SLEUTHING
“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 drive it as skillfully as Bertha can drive her father’s horses.”
“But there is snow on the roads as soon as you leave town,” Geraldine contributed. “The snow plough hasn’t even reached as far as the Wainwright 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, “We may be 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.
“Oh, 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. What could the 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.”
“Oh, 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 know your name?”
“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 that she was associating with a girl who sometimes worked in a grocery. The snob in her was not entirely dead, she feared. But she must kill 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—”
“Oh, 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 cupola 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’ the county. 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 alack 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?”
CHAPTER XXI
A VALENTINE PARTY
On Saturday afternoon, when Geraldine was leaving Colonel Wainwright’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 understand why Doris wanted the boy, and she realized that it was her own attitude 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’s your work. 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’s all pleasant,” 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 hope you don’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.
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