[Illustration: “THIS OUGHT TO SAVE US A MILE,” SAID MR. MARLEY.

_The Riddle Club Through the Holidays._    _Frontispiece_--(_Page 232_)]




  THE RIDDLE CLUB
  THROUGH THE
  HOLIDAYS

  The Club and Its Doings
  How the Riddles Were Solved
  And What the Snowman Revealed

  BY
  ALICE DALE HARDY

  AUTHOR OF “THE RIDDLE CLUB AT HOME,” “THE RIDDLE CLUB
  IN CAMP,” ETC.

  _ILLUSTRATED BY_
  WALTER S. ROGERS

  NEW YORK
  GROSSET & DUNLAP
  PUBLISHERS

  Made in the United States of America




THE RIDDLE CLUB BOOKS

BY ALICE DALE HARDY

  12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

  THE RIDDLE CLUB AT HOME
  THE RIDDLE CLUB IN CAMP
  THE RIDDLE CLUB THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS

  GROSSET & DUNLAP
  Publishers     : :     New York

  COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
  GROSSET & DUNLAP




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                             PAGE

      I. LOOKING AHEAD                   1

     II. PARTY PLANS                    12

    III. JESS HAS LUCK                  21

     IV. HALLOWE’EN FUN                 31

      V. TABLES TURNED                  44

     VI. POLLY’S PROBLEM                54

    VII. A POSTPONEMENT                 64

   VIII. MOVING DAY                     74

     IX. THE SECRET IS OUT              84

      X. IN CAMP AGAIN                  94

     XI. ARTIE’S ADVENTURE             104

    XII. THE RIDDLE CLUB MEETS         113

   XIII. FRED WILLIAMSON, BANKER       122

    XIV. ON POND’S HILL                132

     XV. DETECTIVE MARGY               141

    XVI. RIDDLE CHAP                   151

   XVII. LOST TREASURES                161

  XVIII. A PRACTICAL JOKE              170

    XIX. THE SPECIAL MEETING           180

     XX. MERRY CHRISTMAS               190

    XXI. ANOTHER RACE                  199

   XXII. CAUGHT IN A STORM             209

  XXIII. MRS. WICKS                    219

   XXIV. HOME AGAIN                    229

    XXV. THE LAST OF THE SNOWMAN       238




THE RIDDLE CLUB THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS




CHAPTER I

LOOKING AHEAD


“I _did_ have ten cents, but I spent it,” explained Ward Larue
carefully.

Fred Williamson shook the bank he held in his hand till the contents
rattled.

“What did you spend it for?” he demanded.

“A magnifying glass,” admitted Ward. “I needed one.”

“I never saw such a boy for spending money,” complained Fred. “You will
end up in the poorhouse, see if you don’t!”

“I guess if I paid ten cents in for Riddle Club dues, it wouldn’t save
me from going to the poorhouse,” objected Ward.

“No, I don’t think it would, either,” said Jess Larue, Ward’s sister.

Fred gazed at the circle in despair.

“You don’t any of you have the right idea about these club dues,” he
informed them. “You seem to think I want the money to go off and spend
on myself. There’s no use in having a treasurer, unless you’re willing
to put something in the treasury.”

“Oh, but, Fred! we are willing,” protested Polly Marley, president of
the Riddle Club. “Of course we’re willing. The only reason I didn’t pay
to-day was because I didn’t have ten cents.”

“And why didn’t you?” said Fred, for all the world, Ward thought, like
the orators who spoke in River Bend on the Fourth of July. “Why didn’t
you?”

Polly was not awed by Fred’s rhetoric. She laughed at him.

“I didn’t have ten cents,” she giggled, “because I loaned it to some
one.”

“Artie, I suppose,” grumbled Fred. He considered that his position as
treasurer gave him the right to ask any amount of personal questions
when dues were not forthcoming.

“No-o, it wasn’t Artie,” said Polly, still smiling.

“But Artie hasn’t paid his dues, either,” declared Fred, fixing that
small boy with a stern eye. “Where’s your ten cents, Artie?”

Artie Marley, Polly’s brother, wriggled uneasily.

“Now----” he stammered, “now, I had ten cents. But I haven’t got it
now. I’ll pay you the next meeting, Fred.”

“What did you do with the dime you had?” asked Fred.

“I spent it for ink,” said Artie, solemnly. “If I’m going to write a
book, I have to write it in ink, don’t I?”

Artie Marley was much given to reading books, and now his modest desire
was to write one.

“I don’t think you need a whole bottle of ink to write a book with,”
said Fred, judiciously. “You could have borrowed your mother’s ink and
saved the ten cents.”

Artie gazed at him with respect. He had had the same thought himself,
he declared.

“But when I took the bottle from Mother’s desk, I spilled most of it on
the stairs,” he confided. “And so I had to take half of the new ink I
bought to fill her bottle up so she wouldn’t miss it.”

“Well, the next time,” Fred instructed him, “you want to buy something,
you pay your dues first. You ought to have some sense of--of--some
sense of duty!” he concluded magnificently.

“I paid my dues!” exclaimed Fred’s twin sister, Margy. “Didn’t I, Fred?”

The air with which Margy Williamson said this was too much for Jess.
In spite of Polly’s warning tug at her dress she spoke “right out in
meeting,” as her grandmother would have said.

“The reason you paid your dues, Margy Williamson,” said Jess, clearly,
“is because you borrowed the money from Polly. That’s why she couldn’t
pay hers.”

Margy flushed and Fred frowned.

“I liked lending it to Margy,” said Polly, hurriedly. “If I’d kept it,
likely as not I would have spent it. Margy’s going to pay me back next
week.”

“What I don’t understand,” announced Fred, still frowning, “is why this
club is so hard up. We paid dues before we went to camp, and though I
won’t say you fell over yourselves to pay, I didn’t have the trouble
I’m having now.”

And Fred wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, as though he found
his duties almost too much for him.

“Well, we didn’t pay dues all summer,” said Polly, slowly, “and I think
we forgot--If you get out of a habit, you know, it’s hard to pick it up
again. Didn’t any one pay this time, Fred?”

“Only Margy,” said Fred, gloomily, “and she borrowed the money.”

“Didn’t you?” struck in Artie, quickly.

“Well,” said Fred, lamely, “I had to contribute to the post-card fund
in school. That took my dime.”

Ward and Artie fell into each other’s arms and tumbled over on the
floor. It was their way of expressing delight.

“All the same,” declared Fred, raising his voice above the laughter
that greeted his confession, “the next time this club meets, no one is
going to be allowed to leave this room without paying their dues.”

Polly Marley was a tactful girl, and she knew when to change a subject.

“We haven’t decided about Hallowe’en,” she reminded them.

“That’s so,” agreed Fred, with relief. “Are we going to have a party?”

“Mother doesn’t want Ward and me to dress up and just go around,” said
Jess. “So I think we’d better have a party--just us, you know. We don’t
need any one else.”

The six members of the Riddle Club smiled at one another. They had
the best of good times when “just us” and no outsiders were invited.
Weren’t they back from a summer in camp where they proved their theory
once more? Their tanned faces and bright eyes showed what a healthful
summer it had been and their good spirits spoke for their happiness.

“It’s our turn to have a party,” said Margy Williamson, eagerly. “Polly
and Artie had us Hallowe’en last year. We can have the kitchen at our
house and do anything we please.”

“I thought you’d come to our house; but it’s all right that way,” said
Polly. “Shall we dress up?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s one bit of fun unless we dress up and wear
false-faces,” declared Margy.

“We’ll know each other--can’t help it, with only six of us,” demurred
Fred.

“That’s all right--we can pretend to be fooled,” said Jess Larue.

So it was decided to wear costumes and false-faces.

“Is the window open?” asked Polly, suddenly, with a shiver.

“Closed,” reported Fred. “Gee! there is a blast coming from somewhere.”

“The door’s swung open,” said Artie, rising to close it.

“I think it’s awfully cold up here,” said Margy, with customary
frankness.

She wore a sweater, and so did the other girls, but there was no
denying the clubroom in the loft of the barn was chilly.

“I’ve just thought!” went on Margy. “What shall we do when it’s
winter? We’ll freeze to death up here.”

Jess looked distressed. The room was in her father’s barn, and she had
never considered the advent of cold weather. The Riddle Club had been
formed in the spring, and the meetings had been held--until the trip to
camp--very comfortably in the little room.

“That’s so,” said Polly now. “We can’t meet here in winter. I don’t see
what we are going to do.”

“It won’t be winter for perfect ages,” declared the hopeful Jess.
“To-day is what Dora calls an ‘odd day.’ She was saying this morning
that we’ll probably have warm weather again. There’s Indian summer--we
haven’t had that yet. I don’t think it’s really cold up here--do you?”

“Not really cold,” answered Polly. “But I’m thinking of December. It
will be cold then.”

“How did the horses and cows keep warm when they stayed in this barn?”
questioned Artie. “Were they cold, too?”

“Of course not!” retorted Ward. “Horses and cows are never cold. They
like cold weather.”

“They keep each other warm,” said Fred, remembering something he had
heard. “The animal heat in their bodies keeps them warm. Besides,
farmers put blankets on their horses in the winter time.”

“We could wrap up in blankets,” suggested Polly.

“My mother is very particular about her blankets,” said Margy. “She
won’t let us take them for tents, and she has to have them washed a
certain way. I don’t believe she would ever let us have them out here
in the barn.”

The other members of the Riddle Club were equally sure that their
mothers would object to lending blankets for club meetings.

“Well, there ought to be some way,” said Ward, thoughtfully. “Couldn’t
we put in a furnace?”

“A furnace!” chorused the club. “What kind of a furnace?”

“Oh, a furnace,” repeated Ward. “A regular furnace, you know. That
would keep us nice and warm.”

“And where,” asked Fred, in some amazement, “would we get the money to
buy a furnace?”

“I don’t think they cost much,” said Ward. “Perhaps we have enough in
your bank.”

Fred groaned in anguish and Polly laughed.

“That’s it,” said Fred, bitterly. “Never want to pay a cent in, but
always willing to let it all go out. Take the last penny in the
bank--what do you care? Why should dues worry you? They’re only
something to throw away.”

“Don’t spend your old dues, if you don’t want to,” snapped Ward. “I
don’t care whether you put in a furnace or not; I’m never cold. It’s
the girls who are making a fuss.”

“A furnace costs a heap of money,” put in Polly, wisely. “We never
could afford that. Besides, Mr. Larue wouldn’t let us. We might set
fire to the barn.”

“Well, how about that old gasolene stove that Mother threw away last
week?” suggested Artie. “There’s nothing the matter with it, except it
leaks.”

“How much more do you want the matter with it?” inquired Fred. “No
gasolene stove comes into this clubroom while I’m a member.”

“Then what shall we have?” asked Jess, sadly.

“I was just thinking that an electric heater wouldn’t be so bad,” said
Fred. “We could run wires from the pole out in front and connect it
with the heater in here. We could light the barn with the same current,
too, and perhaps have meetings at night. That would be fun, wouldn’t
it?”

“We could have our Hallowe’en party out here,” cried Polly. “Think of
having it in the barn! Such heaps of fun!”

“I don’t see where you expect to get the money,” said Ward, coldly.
“If we can’t touch those precious old dues, how are you going to have
electric lights? Mr. Brewer had them put in his barn last week and it
cost more than fifty dollars. He told Daddy so. They didn’t have to run
the wires as far as we shall, either.”

“Have we fifty dollars in the bank?” asked Jess, curiously.

“Nowhere near,” Fred informed her. “I guess that knocks out the
electric heater idea. The only thing I can see that we can do is to
bring hot water bottles with us, when it is cold.”

“We can have an ice hut and crawl inside,” giggled Polly. “The Eskimos
manage somehow, and we will, too, I guess.”

“Anyway, it isn’t cold yet, not real cold,” argued Jess. “And when it
does snow, it will bank the window and make it warmer. I don’t believe
we’ll need any kind of a heater or furnace.”

“It’s going to be dark earlier every time, too,” said Margy, who had a
habit of looking ahead. “In December it will be pitch dark long before
five o’clock. There’s Mrs. Pepper feeding her hens now. I don’t believe
it’s much after four.”

“Here, chick, chick, chick!” they could hear Mrs. Pepper, a neighbor,
calling. “Here, chick, chick, chick!”

“You never catch Carrie feeding those hens,” said Jess, peering through
the window. “Oh, say, what do you know----” Her voice trailed off
without completing the sentence and her dark eyes began to dance.

Polly was ready to ask her what she was thinking, but the boys wanted
the meeting adjourned. So in a few minutes they were rushing down the
loft ladder, Ward having first carefully locked the clubroom door.

“Remember, everybody come over to our house after school to-morrow,”
said Margy, as the group separated at the door, the two Larues to go
into their house to supper and the other four to cross the street to
the Marley and the Williamson houses, which were next door to each
other. “We’ll plan about the Hallowe’en party.”




CHAPTER II

PARTY PLANS


The Riddle Club were very strict about not using their clubroom for
any purpose other than club meetings. The six members were practically
inseparable, going to school together, playing and working together
most of the time outside of school. But no matter what they did, or
what they wanted to play, unless they had a meeting of their Riddle
Club on hand, the clubroom was left in perfect order and kept locked.

Perhaps you know all about the Riddle Club, but if you don’t, a few
words will introduce you. It had been Polly Marley’s idea--this
club--and she was the president. Fred Williamson was treasurer. Fred
and Margy were twins, Artie was Polly Marley’s younger brother, and
Ward and Jess Larue were brother and sister. Jess was two years older
than Ward. These children lived in River Bend, a town on the Rocio
River. Mr. Larue was the president of the line of steamboats that went
up and down the river, carrying freight and passengers.

In the first book of this series, named “The Riddle Club at Home,” it
has been told how the Riddle Club flourished and spurred another group
of boys and girls to form a rival dub. This was known as the Conundrum
Club, and Carrie Pepper was its president. They challenged the members
of the Riddle Club to a memorable riddle contest and the latter came
out victors.

Of course it was not to be thought of that a summer should separate
such close friends, so what could be more natural than for the whole
six to go camping at Lake Bassing? They took the Riddle Club with them,
by-laws, president, treasurer and all, and what happened to them during
a delightful two months, you may read in the second book of the series,
called “The Riddle Club in Camp.” They camped on an island, and above
them lived a queer old hermit on another island, while below their camp
was another island on which the Conundrum Club established themselves.

Things were bound to happen with such a lively sextette around, and
no one was disappointed. Artie fell over a bluff. The Conundrum Club
suggested another riddle contest, which proved to be not much more to
their advantage than the first. Then the children were able to solve
the mystery of the kind old hermit. Next, as the season was nearly
over, they won the loving cup in the water carnival. Add to all this
the new friends they made and the out-of-door glad days they had, and
you’ll understand that the summer went too quickly to please them.

But schools will open in September, and the Riddle Club had to come
back to River Bend. They were unexpectedly glad to get back to their
own homes and to the clubroom in the Larue barn. This room had been
given to them from the first meeting, and to the furniture they had
collected for it, they were able to add several interesting trophies
from their summer in camp.

There was the beautiful silver loving cup; a sketch of the entire club
membership, made by an artist and framed for them by Mrs. Marley; the
pennant they had flown in camp from their flag pole; not to mention
a gun for which Artie had paid a dollar and which wouldn’t shoot but
which, he thought, gave a distinguished touch to the room.

Jess mentioned the gun when, the next day, the chums met at the
Williamsons’ house to discuss plans for their Hallowe’en party.

“I think,” she said soberly, “that we ought to give a play Thanksgiving
and let Artie be a Puritan and carry his gun.”

“Oh, let’s!” cried Margy, with enthusiasm. “Let’s give a play! Mother
gave me her old black lace dress yesterday! I could wear that.”

If there was one thing Margy loved to do, it was to “dress up” in grown
people’s finery and sweep about and pretend that she was a princess.

“Who’ll write the play?” demanded Fred.

“You and Polly,” said Ward so promptly that Fred couldn’t help laughing.

“I thought you’d say something like that,” declared Fred. “But you
can change your ideas right away. I know what we’re going to do
Thanksgiving, but it isn’t that.”

“Fred!” said Polly, in a warning voice. “You told me you’d promised you
wouldn’t tell.”

“Well, who’s telling?” demanded Fred. “I haven’t said a word.”

Of course that drove the others frantic with curiosity, but though they
teased and coaxed and, finally, Ward and Artie threw themselves on Fred
and got him down on the rug, not another word could they shake from him.

“You’ll know all about it in plenty of time,” he kept repeating.

“Does Polly know?” demanded Jess.

“No,” replied Fred; “not even Polly knows. No one knows but me.”

“Not Mother or Dad or Dora or----” Ward was beginning in a sing-song
tone, but Fred put a hand gently over his mouth.

“Do keep still,” he said good-humoredly. “All the mothers and fathers
know. Now stop asking questions.”

“You said no one knew except you alone,” Artie protested.

“I meant no one in the Riddle Club except me,” explained Fred.

“Well, anyway, we have Hallowe’en to think about,” said Polly, the
tactful. “If we’re going to wear costumes, it’s time we planned ’em.”

“I had a perfectly wonderful idea,” declared Jess. “But I don’t know
that I’ll tell it now; I can keep secrets, too.”

“Oh, Jess, darling, this isn’t a secret--it won’t be one very long,
at any rate,” said Polly, softly. “We’ll all know soon, and it is
something we’ll just love to do. I’m sure of that. Tell us your idea,
Jess! Please do.”

It was impossible to resist Polly when she spoke like that, and Jess
yielded. As a matter of fact, she had kept her wonderful idea to
herself about as long as she cared to. She had reached the point where
she was eager to share it with some one.

“I think it would be a good idea,” she said proudly, “to come to the
party dressed like animals!”

They stared at her silently, and she was disappointed. She had the plan
so clearly in her own mind, she thought it must be plain to them all.

“Yes, animals,” Jess repeated. “You know all the people who go to
Hallowe’en parties dress like clowns and gypsies and dancing girls
and Brownies, and like that. Well, at our party, why couldn’t we come
dressed like--like chickens and pigs and things?”

A shout of laughter interrupted her.

“Ward would make a handsome pig,” said Artie, a little unkindly.

Ward was a very fat boy, with a round, good-natured face that flushed
at the slightest exertion. He couldn’t run two blocks without getting
out of breath.

“I’ll be a pig,” said Ward now, “if you’ll be the goat.”

Artie reached for him and they went over on the rug in one of their
friendly tussles. Mrs. Williamson had given them the dining-room to
meet in, and had told them to have “all the fun you want.”

“I’m going to be a chicken,” announced Jess, fearful that some one else
might want to take her character. “I thought of it yesterday when we
were watching Mrs. Pepper feed her chickens.”

“Where will you get the feathers?” asked the practical Margy.

“Oh, there must be feathers somewhere,” said Jess, carelessly. “I’ll
fix that part all right.”

“It would be kind of fun, wouldn’t it?” Fred decided. “I wonder if we
can get animal false-faces? I’m going to ask Dad to-night.”

Mr. Williamson kept the department store in River Bend, and he always
carried a stock of false-faces for Hallowe’en. Fred was sure that if
there were such things as “animal faces” his father would have them.

“Let’s not tell what kind of animals we’re going to be,” suggested
Polly. “I love to be surprised.”

“You’d better tell your mother, Margy,” said Ward. “If she sees a bunch
of animals coming to her house Hallowe’en night, she may think a circus
broke loose somewhere and not let us in.”

“You can’t scare my mother,” declared Margy, proudly. “I don’t believe
she’d be afraid of an elephant, if she met him. Not on Hallowe’en, at
any rate.”

“We’re going to have the house to ourselves--did you know that?” said
Fred. “Everything we need for the party will be all ready in the
kitchen, and Mother is going to leave things to eat in the pantry. She
and Dad are going over to Ward’s house. And Mr. and Mrs. Marley, too.”

“They’ll have a party of their own, I guess,” said Jess. “I don’t
believe it is much fun for them to duck for apples and do the things
we do. They would rather listen to Mrs. Marley play the piano and my
mother play her violin than fuss around with Hallowe’en games.”

“They’re going to have the radio set that night, too,” Ward announced.
“Fred said he’d take it down from the clubroom and set it up in the
parlor. There’s a big musical program from some city that night.”

Fred was the wireless expert of the Riddle Club. He had first put up
the handsome radio set the club had been given for their share in the
capture of some radio thieves, and had taken it down and set it up in
camp that summer as well. Then, when the time came to come home, he had
taken down the tree aerials and had brought the set back to the Larue
barn and set it up again in the clubroom. Now for this special night he
would attach a loud speaker and arrange it in the Larue parlor so that
the listening parents might enjoy the concert.

But the girls and boys could not talk long of this grown-up affair
when their own thrilling party was yet to be arranged. They were used
to planning their parties, and their mothers thought that in this way
they had twice the usual amount of fun. Nearly every one can go to a
party, if invited, but not every one could plan a party if he had to.
The members of the Riddle Club did do both nicely.

“We’re going to have all the games we can think of,” said Margy.
“Picking a ring out of a plate of flour; trying to bite a marshmallow
on a string; ducking for apples, of course. What else, Fred?”

“I know,” cried Artie, before Fred could answer. “Go out in the garden
and pull up a cabbage. I read about it in a book.”




CHAPTER III

JESS HAS LUCK


All of the other members of the Riddle Club stared at Artie in blank
wonder.

“Cabbages?” cried Fred.

“What do we pull up a cabbage for?” Margy demanded, curiously.

“To see whether you’ll be rich or poor,” said Artie, as though that
settled the matter.

“How will you know whether you’ll be rich and poor?” Ward demanded.

“Not rich and poor,” Artie corrected him. “Who ever heard of any one
being rich and poor? Rich _or_ poor, silly.”

“Well, all right,” agreed Ward, amiably. “Rich or poor then. How’ll we
know we’re going to be rich or poor by looking at a cabbage?”

Artie perceived that he would have to explain.

“You tell by the dirt,” he said seriously.

“The dirt?” echoed Margy. “What dirt?”

“The dirt on the roots of the cabbage,” said Artie. “If a lot of dirt
sticks, that’s a sign you’re going to be rich; if there isn’t much
dirt, you’re going to be poor.”

“Oh!” said Margy.

“I think that will be fun,” said Jess, briskly.

“I call it a fool stunt, but we’ll try it,” Fred decided. “Know any
more, Artie?”

Artie thought for a moment.

“I know about making wishes,” he said, and paused.

“Well, don’t stop,” Polly urged. “Go on and tell us.”

Artie was as fond of talking as any of the rest, but he had an odd
habit of stopping suddenly, just when his listeners thought he was well
started.

“You make a wish,” he began again, “and then you must go upstairs and
down twice, outdoors and all around the house and around the barn--Of
course, Mr. Williamson hasn’t any barn,” Artie interrupted himself to
say; “but the summerhouse will do, I guess. The book said an ‘outdoor
building,’ and a summerhouse must be an outdoor building. Say, Fred,
isn’t a summerhouse an outdoor building?”

“Oh, of course it is,” the impatient Fred assured him. “Hurry up,
Artie, I’m going to sleep.”

“Where was I?” asked Artie, calmly.

“The wishes,” Margy prodded. “We make a wish and walk upstairs and
downstairs twice and around the house----”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Artie. “Well, you walk around the house and
the barn and then you come in again.”

“Then what happens?” asked Ward.

“Your wishes come true,” Artie said.

“Well, I call that too queer for anything,” remarked Jess, and the
others were inclined to agree with her.

“I don’t see how walking around like that can make wishes come true,”
said Fred.

“It’s the not speaking,” explained Artie. “That does it.”

Polly stared at her brother.

“The--the _what_?” she demanded.

“Not speaking. You know, even if some one calls to you or asks a
question, you can’t say a word till you’ve been all around and come
back,” said Artie.

“You never said anything about that,” Margy informed him. “Can’t we
speak while we’re walking around the house?”

“My, no, not a word,” said Artie, placidly. “After you make the wish,
you can’t say another word till you’ve been up- and downstairs and
around the house and barn.”

“Let’s do that! It sounds awfully spooky,” declared Margy.

“Be sure you find out about the false-faces to-night, Fred,” said
Polly. “If your father hasn’t any, we’ll have to make some.”

Nothing ever daunted Polly. If she could not find what she wanted
ready-made, she made it herself.

“And another thing,” said Margy. “Being the Riddle Club, why can’t we
ask some riddles? I mean short ones--one apiece.”

“All right,” agreed Jess.

“Maybe we can get some about animals,” suggested Artie.

“Oh, any kind of riddle will do,” declared the president of the club.

The plans for the party made, the six chums made fudge as a grand
wind-up to the afternoon. They went home to supper, where the candy
apparently made little difference in their hearty appetites.

Hallowe’en was not far away, and if their animal costumes were to be
made, it was necessary to start work upon them at once. Fred’s father
had almost every kind of false-face manufactured, but he had no animal
ones. Perhaps, as Jess proudly said, they were the first to dress up as
animals for Hallowe’en. Anyway, Polly would have to make the faces.
That was clear.

There was a great deal of laughing and whispering going on every
afternoon after school in each of the three houses on Elm Road. Artie
and Ward shared some joke together, and they might be heard shouting
and laughing soon after they had turned the key in Ward’s or Artie’s
room door, as the case might be.

“I think they’re dancing,” Jess confided to Polly. “They shake the
ceiling of the dining-room. Ward’s room is right over the dining-room,
you know.”

“Artie hates to dance,” Polly returned. “You couldn’t make him. No,
it’s something else. I don’t know what. They shake the house when
they’re over here, too.”

For not even Polly was to know what animals were represented. Every one
was so determined to keep his or her costume a secret that it had been
decided that “any kind of face” was to be worn.

“Of course they won’t match,” said Jess. “But that will be even more
fun.”

Jess was having a thrilling time trying to get her costume together.
She had set her heart on going as a chicken, and every one knows that
if there is one thing a chicken cannot do without, it is feathers.

“I can manage the wings,” she confided to Dora, the good-natured maid
in her mother’s kitchen, “because I can use those two turkey wings we
had left from last Thanksgiving. But where will I get the rest of the
feathers?”

Good fortune smiled unexpectedly on Jess. At least, she thought it was
good fortune. Passing Mrs. Pepper’s house one morning on her way to the
store for her mother--it was Saturday--Jess spied a barrel standing at
the edge of the drive. It was filled with soft, fluffy chicken feathers!

“Oh, Mrs. Pepper, are you throwing those feathers _away_?” asked Jess,
in the tone of one who has found a neighbor tossing out a gold mine.

Mrs. Pepper was raking leaves from her lawn. Carrie usually stayed in
bed late Saturday mornings, and she was not up yet.

“Why, yes, Jess, I put that barrel out for the junk man. He comes
through town on Saturdays,” answered Mrs. Pepper. “Those feathers
aren’t good enough to save for pillows, and I don’t like to burn them.”

“Could--could I have them?” asked Jess, her eyes shining.

“My lands, child! what do you want with them?” exclaimed Mrs. Pepper.
“Take them and welcome, of course; but I’ll need the barrel back.
Barrels are scarce, and I like to make mine last.”

“I’ll bring the barrel right back,” promised Jess, joyfully. “Thank you
ever so much, Mrs. Pepper.”

Mrs. Pepper stared at her as the small girl began to roll the barrel
toward her side lawn. The Pepper property joined Mr. Larue’s, and Jess
had not far to go. The feathers, of course, weighed almost nothing, and
the task was not difficult, but Mrs. Pepper stood racking her brains to
think what use Jess could have for the down and bits of feathers she
had thrown away. She was still standing there ten minutes later when
Carrie came out.

“Jess Larue took those feathers?” Carrie repeated, when her mother told
her. “I don’t see what on earth she wants them for! Why didn’t you make
her tell you before you gave her the barrel?”

“I believe in minding my own affairs,” said Mrs. Pepper, tartly.

She kept a great many chickens and sold them dressed; that is, killed
and with the feathers taken off. Her good feathers she saved for
pillows, but the stuff that filled the barrel was down from young
chickens and broken feathers that were of no use to her.

Jess rolled her barrel up to the side door of the house and reached
the hall before Dora spied her.

“Where you going, Jess, with that dirty old barrel?” she asked
suspiciously.

“I’m taking it up to my room,” replied Jess.

“What’s in it--let me look,” replied Dora. “Feathers! Jess, for
goodness’ sake, roll that barrel outside, quick! If your mother was
to catch you scattering those nasty little pin feathers all over the
house, she’d tell you a thing or two!”

“I’m not going to scatter them,” Jess argued. “Help me carry the barrel
up to my room, will you, Dora? I have to take it back.”

When Dora understood that the barrel was to go back to Mrs. Pepper, she
was more determined than ever that Jess should not take it up to her
room.

“I know exactly what you’d do, Jess,” Dora said. “You’d dump those
feathers out on your bedroom floor and take the empty barrel back; and
in less than five minutes, every rug and carpet in this house, to say
nothing of the chairs and the sofas, would have pin feathers sticking
in them.”

“Well, where can I put them?” asked Jess, realizing that unless Dora
was willing to help her she could not hope to get the barrel up the
stairs. “I have to have these feathers for Hallowe’en, Dora.”

“Take them out in the barn, to be sure,” said Dora. “Why you and
Ward don’t want to play in the barn, beats me. Many a child would be
thankful for such a light, clean place to stay in. You can make all the
noise you want, too, and do as you please out there. And you’re forever
hanging around the house.”

“It’s cold,” said Jess, absently, but her mind was busy with another
problem. She had remembered that she needed flour paste.

“If I take the feathers out to the barn, Dora,” she said coaxingly,
“how about some flour paste? Let me make some?”

“You’re too hard on the flour barrel,” declared Dora, good-naturedly.
“Be off to the barn now and leave your barrel there; then go and get
the soap your mother promised me and I’ll have the paste ready for you
when you come back.”

Jess was willing, and she rolled the barrel out to the barn. She
was glad that Ward was over with Artie Marley, for it gave her an
opportunity to make her Hallowe’en costume without an audience. She
dumped the feathers on the floor of the barn, not minding in the least
that they flew about and lighted, many of them, in her hair and on
her blouse and skirt, then rolled the empty barrel back to the Pepper
driveway.

Carrie saw her and called to her to wait, but Jess shouted that she
was going to the store and ran off quickly. It was not part of her plan
to have Carrie’s sharp eyes and Carrie’s quick tongue ferret out her
secret.

True to her promise, Dora had a generous basin of flour paste ready for
Jess when she came back from the store, and the girl took it gratefully
and went out to the barn. She made several trips to the house for
things she needed, scissors, newspapers, and a paper of pins were among
them, but at last she was evidently equipped, for she stayed in the
barn.

“Where’s Jess?” asked Polly and Margy, half an hour later, at the Larue
back door.

“Out in the barn--at least, she was a little while ago,” answered Dora.
“I haven’t heard a word from her since I made her a bowl of flour
paste.”

Polly and Margy went out to the barn. The sliding door was pushed
half-way open, and there on the barn floor they beheld a remarkable
sight. They stared, wondering what it could be.

“Jess!” called Polly, uncertainly. “Jess! is that you?”




CHAPTER IV

HALLOWE’EN FUN


“Come away,” whispered Margy. “That isn’t Jess.”

But it was Jess. The rolling figure sat up and stared at them with
Jess’s own brown eyes.

“Hello!” said Jess, none too cordially.

“What in the world are you doing?” asked Margy, more frankly than
politely.

“I’m busy,” answered Jess.

“You’re a sight--isn’t she, Polly?” said Margy.

Polly didn’t wish to agree, but the truth was that Jess was the most
remarkable looking girl she had ever seen. She seemed to be covered
with feathers--her hair and face and hands. They were on her shoes, her
stockings, and parts of her dress. There was almost as much dirt and
dust mixed with the feathers as there was flour paste, and that had
evidently been used in liberal quantities.

“What _are_ you doing?” asked Polly, helplessly.

“Well, if you must know,” said Jess, “I’m making my Hallowe’en
costume. Only these mean old feathers aren’t much good,” she added
fretfully. “They won’t stay stuck.”

She went on to explain that she had cut a chicken out of
newspapers--“both sides and sewed it in the middle”--and had spread the
paste over this. The plan was to roll in the feathers with this on and
in this way the pattern would be covered with feathers which would dry
on. Then, with the addition of the turkey wings, Jess would be ready
for the party.

“I have a pair of bright yellow stockings I never wore, and I am going
to paint my shoes yellow, too,” she announced, in a burst of confidence.

Polly wanted to laugh, but she was afraid of hurting Jess’s feelings.

“It looks pretty messy just now,” said Polly. “But perhaps when it
dries it will be all right. You’re taking a lot of trouble, aren’t you,
Jess?”

“Well, I like things to be right,” admitted Jess. “I think it will be
fun to have animals at the party. Margy, will you stick a handful of
feathers on that bare place? Here, put some more paste on first.”

Margy didn’t want to put her hands in the feathers, so Polly had to
come to the rescue. Then she helped Jess take the paper off, which was
difficult, for it was wet and heavy with paste and easily torn.

“You mustn’t wear it again till the night of the party,” Polly
cautioned the designer. “You’ll wear it out, if you’re not careful.”

“I won’t touch it till Hallowe’en,” promised Jess. “But now you’ve seen
mine, I think you ought to tell me what you’re going to wear,” she
declared.

“I’m going to be a leopard,” said Polly, instantly. “It’s because we
had some spotted flannel in the house.”

“And Mother is going to lend me her old astrakhan coat, so I can be a
lamb,” said Margy. “I think lambs are lovely. I wouldn’t want to be any
kind of homely animal, even for fun.”

Jess’s dark eyes grew round with curiosity.

“What do you suppose the boys are going to wear?” she asked.

But no one knew, and up to the night of the party no one had found out.
It had been agreed among the six friends that each was to go alone to
the Williamson house, so it happened that the three girls and Mr. and
Mrs. Williamson were already in the big, roomy kitchen, where the party
was to be, when some one knocked at the door.

“That’s Fred! I know it is!” exclaimed Margy. “I just heard him go
down the front stairs and out. He’s come around to the back door.”

Margy was wearing her mother’s woolly coat, and with her shiny black
shoes and black silk gloves--to represent the forefeet--made a very
cunning and attractive little lamb--till one’s glance reached her face.
Her false-face was that of an old witch, and the contrast between this
grinning old-woman face and the woolly young lamb was too much for Mr.
Williamson. He had gone into fits of laughter as soon as he saw Margy.

The arrival of Polly, in spotted flannel that covered her hands and
feet much as a sleeping garment would, her face hidden behind a
“Brownie” false-face, made Mr. Williamson laugh, too. But when Jess
arrived, Mrs. Williamson was really alarmed about him. He laughed so
hard he had to take out his handkerchief and wipe his eyes.

Even Polly and Margy had to laugh at Jess. She wore her feather suit,
as she called the paper and feather costume, and she had rigged up the
turkey wings with string so that they flapped--sometimes--when she
pulled the string. As the nearest thing to a chicken’s head she could
get in a false-face, she had chosen a mask with an extremely long and
hooked nose that, she fondly hoped, looked like a chicken’s beak. She
had taken an old pair of shoes and covered them with bright yellow
paint, buttons and all.

Mr. and Mrs. Williamson were only waiting to greet the guests before
going over to spend the evening at the Larue house. Answering the knock
at the door, Mr. Williamson opened it and a kangaroo leaped into the
room. For a moment the girls were startled, and then they saw that it
was Fred.

“I think that’s a fine costume, Fred,” said Polly. “Did you make it?”

“Mother helped,” replied Fred, hopping around the kitchen the better to
show off his brown flannel suit and long tail. It covered his head and
eyes so that he didn’t need a mask, and when he crouched in a sitting
position, Polly assured him that he looked exactly like the pictures of
kangaroos they had seen in their school geographies.

Rat-a-tat-tat! went a knock on the door.

“Bet that’s Artie,” said Fred, confidently.

“Ward, more likely,” declared Jess. “He was getting ready when I
started to come.”

Mr. Williamson opened the door, and they all leaned forward to look.

First a long, long neck stretched itself into the kitchen, then an
ungainly, rather square body, mounted on four legs, followed. This
queer-looking creature was spotted in circles, and had a long, thin
tail.

“A giraffe!” cried Jess, guessing first.

“Artie and Ward! Well, what do you know about that!” shouted Fred. “Why
didn’t you tell a fellow?”

“Wanted to surprise you,” croaked the giraffe. “Guess we did it.”

And to Fred’s amazement, the long neck twisted several times around his
own neck in what was meant to be an affectionate embrace.

“Here--let go of me--get out!” cried Fred, trying to back away. “What
kind of a neck have you, a rubber one?”

The girls giggled and Mr. Williamson untangled the long neck carefully.

“Don’t let it rip,” begged the giraffe. “If it comes unsewed the whole
thing will be spoiled. That’s the old rubber hose in that neck.”

“So that’s what you’ve been doing so long,” said Polly. “I see! That’s
why you were shaking the ceiling.”

[Illustration: “A GIRAFFE!” CRIED JESS, GUESSING FIRST.]

“Well, if you think it’s easy to walk in this, you ought to try it,”
said Artie’s voice. “Ward had to be the front because he is taller,
and I’m the back legs. At first we walked into each other and couldn’t
turn corners without making a mess of it. But how we do fine.”

“I don’t know whether it is safe to leave this menagerie or not,
Mother,” said Mr. Williamson, smiling. “But we won’t be so far away
that we can’t get back if we’re needed. Now, youngsters,” he added to
the children, “go as far as you like and have all the fun you want. But
don’t go off the grounds and don’t set the house on fire. Fred, I trust
your good sense to know when to stop.”

“Good-bye,” cried the animals, crowding to the door. “Good-bye. We’re
going to have a lovely party.”

Mr. and Mrs. Williamson looked back and laughed. The light from the
kitchen streamed through the doorway and showed a wild-looking group on
the porch.

“I’m glad they didn’t want any others,” said Mrs. Williamson, as they
reached the Larue house. “They get on so well together that they do not
really need any more to make a party.”

Left alone, Margy and Fred, as host and hostess, announced that the
games would begin at once. Of course the false-faces had to come off
and the gloves, too, and Fred had to fold back his brown hood, while
Artie and Ward had to step “out of their skin,” as they put it, to duck
for apples.

This was not Ward’s favorite pastime, for it always made him gasp
dreadfully; but he wouldn’t beg off, and manfully went groping about
under the water till he nearly choked. He never succeeded in getting
hold of an apple, but Fred brought up two and Polly one, while Jess and
Artie each lifted one by the stem, merely to drop it before it reached
the surface.

Then they tackled the swaying marshmallow on the string, and most of
them were liberally coated with the snowy powder before Margy grasped
the mallow in her strong little white teeth and swallowed it and nearly
swallowed the string, too.

“Now the plate of flour,” commanded Fred, when the marshmallow was
gone. “Put your hands behind you, every one, and do your best.”

Ward made a desperate effort, but, unfortunately, opened his eyes when
his face was buried in the flour and coughed and sputtered so much as
he tried to wink them clear again, that Fred pulled him out in great
alarm.

“Let me try,” begged Artie.

He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and ducked into the flour for the
hidden ring. Alas, he had found the ring and was ready to take it in
his teeth when he found he could not hold his breath another minute.
He let it out in one great rush, and the flour flew in all directions,
most of it landing on the interested five standing near.

“Never mind,” said Margy, kindly, for Artie looked distressed. “We have
plenty more flour, and Mother said she didn’t care how much mess we
made in the kitchen. It’s easy to clean.”

So the ring was hidden in the flour again, and Jess tried and failed to
find it. Polly was the one who finally brought it to light.

“And now I guess it is time we had the riddles,” said the president of
the club. “Each girl is to ask a boy a riddle and then each boy is to
do the same thing to a girl. Jess, you can start if you want to.”

“All right. Artie, what word may be pronounced quicker by adding a
syllable to it?”

“That’s a real hard one,” grumbled Artie. “Why didn’t you make it
easier?”

“I know that one,” shouted Ward.

“Guess, Artie,” said Polly. “Hurry, we don’t want to lose time over the
riddles.”

“I guess it’s fast, because you add E-R and then it’s faster.”

“Almost right,” replied Jess. “The word is quick. Add E-R and you have
quicker.”

“I’ve one for you, Ward,” said Margy. “Why is an egg like a young colt?”

“Oh, I’ve got you, Margy! The answer is because neither can be used
until broken.”

“What do you mean--broken?” asked Jess. “I mean of a colt?”

“Why, a colt is broken to harness,” explained Margy, impatiently. “They
are of no account until they’re broken.”

“Now it’s my turn,” said Polly. “Fred, here is a real mannish riddle:
What is the best bet made--one covering everything?”

“Gee, that’s some bet--to cover everything. Must be the heavens.”

“Is that your guess?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re wrong. The best bet that covers everything is the
alphabet.”

“Huh! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Now you boys must ask us girls. Fred, go ahead.”

“I’ll ask you, Polly. Here is a stinger: What’s the difference between
a brand new ten-cent piece and an old-fashion quarter?”

“The difference is exactly fifteen cents,” replied Polly, placidly.

“Wow! I guess you read the same riddle book I did.”

“Here is one for you, Margy,” said Artie. “Why is a lollipop like a
horse?”

“When he’s the same color,” said Margy, quickly.

“No, that isn’t the answer. A lollipop is like a horse because the more
you lick it the faster it goes.”

“Now, Ward, you ask the last riddle,” said Polly. “Then we’ll go on
with our Hallowe’en fun.”

“Well, Jess, what is the ugliest hood ever brought to light?”

“Ugly hood? Oh, lots of them are ugly. Sadie Drew has a hood that is a
sickly green and has bright red----”

“Never mind all that. What is positively the ugliest hood ever thought
of?”

“I don’t know. What hood is it?”

“A falsehood,” cried Ward, triumphantly.

“Oh, well, I guess that’s right.”

“Now everybody has asked a riddle, let us go on with our Hallowe’en
stunts,” said Polly. “Let us start on the wishes.”

“Everybody make a wish,” directed Artie. “Then we’ll go upstairs and
down and around the summerhouse and the real house. Remember, nobody is
to say a word.”

They made their wishes hurriedly and silently, and then, Fred leading
the way, they started. They kept rather close together, for each time
they went up- and downstairs--and they had to do that twice--their
shadows made such queer shapes on the wall that they looked positively
spooky.

Artie and Ward clumped along in the giraffe suit, and the leopard and
kangaroo looked almost real. Each one wanted to say to some one else,
“Oh, doesn’t it make you feel jumpy?” but that, of course, would have
broken the spell.

When they had been up and down the stairs twice, Fred led the way
outdoors. Then, indeed, they did keep close together, for the moon was
crossed by scudding clouds and the dry leaves, rattling over the dried
grass, made funny, little scratching noises. Polly said afterward that
she would not have been surprised to have seen a witch come jumping out
at her from behind the summerhouse.

Around the house they trailed, and around the summerhouse, in perfect
silence. Back to the house they went and into the brightly lighted
kitchen.

“Well!” said Margy, in great relief. “I guess our wishes are coming
true. No one said a word.”

“I almost did, though,” declared Jess. “I nearly yelled. Didn’t you see
something back of the summerhouse?”

“Oh, Jess, you’re getting nervous,” said Fred. “There wasn’t anything
there. We walked all around it.”

“It was inside,” replied Jess, glancing fearfully over her shoulder.

“There wasn’t a thing there--not a thing,” insisted Fred. “You imagined
it. Come on now, let’s go pull up the cabbages and see if we’re going
to be rich or poor. Then we’ll have the eats.”

“Jess,” whispered Polly, as they streamed out again, headed for the
garden patch, “I thought I saw something in the summerhouse, too.”




CHAPTER V

TABLES TURNED


Jess and Polly looked over their shoulders as they walked to the
garden, which was at one side of the house, but the others marched
briskly along. In the summer Mr. Williamson had a flourishing “truck
patch,” and even now there were some late vegetables still in the
ground. The patch was protected from frost, and Fred sometimes
boasted of getting cabbage or parsnips “from the garden” as late as
Thanksgiving Day.

“Now, how do we do this stunt, Artie?” asked Fred, when they had
reached the row of cabbages. “You pull one and show us.”

Artie pulled a fine large cabbage and exhibited its roots to the
interested audience.

“Lots of dirt on it,” he pointed out--indeed, in his zeal, he had
loosened perhaps half a peck of earth, most of which clung to the
roots--“and that shows I will be very rich some day.”

“Maybe Fred will,” said Polly, mischievously. “That dirt is from his
father’s garden.”

“It’s just a sign,” explained Artie, hastily.

Margy stooped and brought up another cabbage, but as she lifted it she
shook it carefully and nearly all the dirt fell off.

“There goes your fortune!” cried Jess. “You mustn’t shake it, Margy.”

“It’s too heavy with all that dirt on it,” Margy complained.

“Well, if there’s a bag of gold at the bottom of this one, it’s going
to stay right there,” announced Polly, tugging at the nearest cabbage.

A shriek from Margy startled her. She let go the cabbage in time to
look up and see a tall white figure land in the patch, apparently
from the skies. They all saw it at the same instant, and, cabbages
forgotten, they rushed madly for the house. Margy was crying wildly,
Polly pulled Jess along by the hand, and poor Ward and Artie fell down,
but scrambled up again and managed to get over the ground in spite
of their costume, which was never designed for a running suit. They
reached the back porch, stumbled pell-mell up the steps and into the
kitchen. Margy closed the door with a bang that shook the house.

“Oh-oo!” she wept, her teeth chattering. “What was it? What was it?”

“I think--I think it was a ghost,” quavered Jess.

“It was a million feet high--almost,” said Artie. “Did you see how it
was waving its arms?”

“There are no such things as ghosts,” declared Polly, firmly. “It
couldn’t have been a ghost, could it----” She had meant to say, “Could
it, Fred?” but at that moment she made an alarming discovery.

Fred wasn’t in the kitchen with them!

“Where’s Fred?” asked Polly, anxiously. “Didn’t he come in? Has any one
seen him?”

“The ghost has carried him off!” cried Margy, in alarm. “He’s gone! Oh,
my, what will Mother say?”

“It wasn’t a ghost,” said Polly again. “I tell you, there are no
ghosts. And if it was a ghost, it couldn’t carry Fred off--a ghost
can’t carry anything.”

“You just said there aren’t any ghosts,” objected Margy.

“Well, I mean if there were ghosts, they couldn’t carry any one off,”
Polly explained.

“Then where is Fred?” asked Artie, quite as though he thought Polly
would be able to tell him.

“I don’t know,” Polly admitted. “You don’t suppose he could have fallen
down a hole somewhere, do you? I don’t remember having seen him after
I saw the ghost--and that was just before I started to pull up the
cabbage.”

No one remembered having seen Fred.

“But then,” added Ward, “I couldn’t see anything, really. The flannel
slipped down over my eyes and I couldn’t see where I was going, let
alone any one else. I don’t know where Fred went.”

“I read once about a man who fell down a canyon and was never seen
again,” contributed Artie, helpfully.

“There isn’t any canyon for Fred to fall down,” declared Jess, with
some scorn. “I think we ought to go over and get Mr. Williamson,
though; perhaps he could find Fred.”

“But if we go outdoors, that ghost--or whatever it is--will grab us,”
said Margy, fearfully.

It was what they were all thinking, and no one wanted to be the first
to volunteer to go over to the Larue house and summon aid.

Ward looked at Artie. They did not think of themselves as brave, but
it really required the strongest kind of courage for them to make the
suggestion that Ward presently offered.

“We’ll go out and look all over the garden, Artie and I,” he said.
“There’s no use in scaring Mrs. Williamson; we may find Fred and then
everything will be all right.”

“I can come, too, and hold a lantern for you,” offered Polly, bravely.
“I’d like to do it.”

“You needn’t come. Girls shouldn’t--shouldn’t--expose themselves to
danger,” said Ward, feeling remarkably like a policeman--or as he
thought a policeman must feel. “But I’d like a lantern. Where is there
one, Margy?”

“Down cellar,” said Margy, rolling her eyes.

“I’m afraid to go down cellar,” announced Jess, flatly. “Goodness only
knows what’s down there. It’s as dark as pitch.”

“We’ll all go down,” suggested Polly. “You can turn on the light at the
head of the stairs, can’t you, Margy?”

Most of the houses in River Bend were wired for electricity, and there
was a switch at the head of the Williamsons’ cellar stairs. Margy
pressed the button, but even the flood of light which lit the cellar
did not give any of them any great confidence. They went down the steps
slowly, and not for anything in the world would they have looked over
their shoulders.

Margy found the lantern behind the furnace, and, as they had not
brought matches, there was no reason for staying, since to light it
they would have to go back to the kitchen. Jess led the way upstairs,
and as she gained the top step, she cried out. Fred was just closing
the outside door.

“Hello!” he said comfortably. “Where’ve you all been?”

“Where have you been?” Margy countered. “You scared us pretty near into
fits. We thought the ghost had caught you.”

“Ward and I were coming out to hunt for you,” Artie said, waving the
lantern. “We went down cellar to get this.”

“Huh, that wasn’t a ghost,” replied Fred. “If you’d hung around a
little, the way I did, you would have found it out pretty quick.”

Margy switched off the cellar light and shut the door.

“What was it, if it wasn’t a ghost?” she asked.

“Joe Anderson,” was Fred’s surprising reply. “He thought he’d be smart.
You haven’t been crying, have you, Margy?”

“Only a little,” said Margy, hastily.

“She thought something had happened to you,” said Polly. “What did you
do, Fred? And weren’t you frightened?”

“I was at first,” acknowledged Fred. “That white thing came up on us
so quietly, it rather took my breath away. But when you all started to
shriek and run, I heard Joe Anderson laugh. I’d know his snicker if I
heard it in China. So I hid behind the pear tree. I thought I’d get a
chance to punch his nose for him.”

“Did you?” chorused Artie and Ward interestedly.

“Well, no, I didn’t,” said Fred. “He followed you up to the porch steps
and then came back, but Albert Holmes came out of the summerhouse--he
must have been hiding there with Joe--and they began talking. And
they’re going to try to play another trick on us in a few minutes. I
heard them planning it. They want to wait till we get quieted down
from this scare, and then Joe is going to ring the doorbell. He thinks
whoever comes to the door will have a fit when they see a giant ghost.”

“A giant ghost?” repeated Polly.

“Yes, a giant ghost. Albert is going to sit on Joe’s shoulder and that
will make the ghost about eight feet high,” said Fred. “I wish I could
think of something to do that would make them feel cheap.”

“Let’s go upstairs and pour water out of the window on them when they
ring the bell,” suggested Jess, excitedly.

Fred shook his head.

“I wonder----” he said slowly. “Yes, I do believe it will work!”

“What will work?” demanded Margy, eagerly. “What will work, Fred?”

“Well, I’ll step into the first half of the giraffe,” explained Fred,
“and Artie can manage the back feet--Ward will get out of breath too
quickly to do what I want done. When the bell rings, we’ll go out the
back door and amble around to the front of the house and just wrap Mr.
Ghost lovingly around with that nice, long, rubber-hose neck. That
ought to give our friends a thrill. They won’t know what has them in
the dark.”

“Oh, yes,” approved Polly. “I think that’s a fine plan. Hurry, Ward,
and let Fred get into your half; the bell may ring any minute.”

Ward would have liked to have guided the giraffe’s neck himself, but he
knew as well as Fred that excitement took his breath away as quickly
as running. Fred had the longer arms, too, and would be able to give a
longer reach to the animal’s long neck.

Fred had hardly slipped into the flannel casing and drawn it tightly
about him and Artie was practicing his best giraffe step, when the
bell over the door leading into the front hall rang sharply. Every one
jumped, though it was a noise they were expecting.

“Stay right where you are,” Fred directed. “If Joe sees you through the
curtains or the glass door, he’ll be suspicious. Come on, Artie, we’ll
have to hurry.”

He and Artie loped down the back steps and sped around the side of the
house. A cautious look showed Fred a towering ghost standing on the
front steps, waiting patiently. Tiptoeing, he and Artie stole up to it
and before the ghost knew what was happening, a long slim, tight coil
was fastened about it.

“Ow! Help! Take it away!” shrieked Joe Anderson’s voice. “Quick,
Albert, take it off! Help! Something’s got me!”

Albert was sitting on Joe’s shoulders, and in his terror and excitement
he began to kick wildly, hammering the unfortunate Joe on the face and
shoulders unmercifully. Fred couldn’t unwind the length of hose--though
he tried--because the end was pinioned under one of Albert’s arms, and
the more the two boys who formed the ghost struggled, the tighter the
coils seemed to grow.

“Help! help!” called Joe, beside himself with fear.

“Ow! Joe! Joe! It’s choking me!” screamed poor Albert, twisting and
turning madly, for his pillow case had slipped too far over his head
and he felt as though he was smothering.

The other children had rushed to the door when they heard the racket.
Across the street in the Larue house lights were blazing through the
windows as the shades were run up, for the noise had reached the
grown-ups there.

“Take it off, Fred,” called Artie. “Hurry--take it off! I can’t see a
thing in here.”

“It--won’t--come--off!” gasped Fred. “Don’t you see me pulling?”

He took a step backward, his foot caught one of Artie’s, and they went
down together, dragging the kicking ghost on top of them. When Mr.
Williamson and Mr. Larue and Mr. Marley reached the spot a few minutes
later, to their astonishment they saw what looked like a brown and
white animal with spots thrashing about on the ground and apparently
fitted with dozens of legs and arms.




CHAPTER VI

POLLY’S PROBLEM


As this queer animal flopped about, muffled cries and shouts came from
it. Dancing around it were four little figures in the wildest state of
excitement.

“Here, here, what’s all this?” asked Mr. Williamson. “You’ll have the
whole town here in another minute. What’s that on the ground?”

“Fred!” said Margy.

“Artie!” cried Polly.

“Joe Anderson and Albert Holmes,” piped out Ward.

“Well, we’ll see if we can sort them out,” said Mr. Williamson, who
seemed to understand.

He grasped a kicking leg and Mr. Marley caught a waving arm. As for Mr.
Larue, he took a whole handful of spots, and that proved to be most of
Joe Anderson.

As soon as the boys stopped twisting and turning, they found they were
not so badly mixed as they had thought. They climbed out of their
wrappings, a little the worse for wear, but not much.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you?” growled Joe Anderson.

“The hose twisted,” explained Fred, with a grin. “Bet you were scared.”

“My mother will be as mad--as mad--as anything!” sputtered Albert
Holmes. “She told me not to take her sheets and pillow case, and now
look at them!”

Alas, for Mrs. Holmes’ good sheet and linen pillow case--they were
covered with dirt and torn in many places.

“Next time,” said Fred, significantly, “don’t come to a party you’re
not invited to.”

“I don’t think that’s called for, Fred,” said his father, quietly. “Go
on back into the house and have your fun there. If you think you’ll
be likely to rouse the neighborhood again, one of us will stay, too;
otherwise we’d like to go back and finish our own party.”

“We’ll be all right,” declared Fred, hastily, and the others echoed his
assurance.

Mr. Williamson waited till he had seen Joe Anderson and Albert well up
the street on their way home, and then he and the other two fathers
went back to the Larue house.

“Perhaps,” said Artie, as the girls and boys found themselves in the
kitchen again, “we’d better not try any more stunts outdoors.”

“Huh, they won’t bother us again--you see if they do!” said Fred, but
Polly and Margy wouldn’t hear of any more trips to the garden.

“Anyway, it’s time we had the eats,” declared Margy, wisely.

She knew the boys could never resist that suggestion, and, sure enough,
as she brought out the plates of sandwiches and doughnuts and the
little pumpkin tarts Mrs. Williamson had left for them, no one had to
be dragged to the table. There was milk to drink, and afterward they
popped corn and buttered and ate it. They were surprised when Mr. and
Mrs. Williamson walked in and announced that it was ten o’clock and
time for all parties to be over.

“I promised your mothers that you’d come home at once,” said Mrs.
Williamson, so there was no excuse for lingering.

In school the next day, Albert Holmes was not exactly pleasant--his
mother had been much “put out” because of the damage done her linen,
and Albert persisted in blaming the Riddle Club members for this
damage. Joe Anderson spread the report that Fred had nearly broken his
arm. He allowed his listeners to infer that Fred had attacked him,
but most of the boys and girls were too well acquainted with Joe to
believe that all the blame could be on one side.

“I’ll be glad when it gets real cold,” said Carrie Pepper to her chum,
Mattie Helms. “I hope we have snow up to the windows of the houses and
tons and tons of ice.”

“Yes,” said Mattie. “I like to go skating, too. But I can’t skate very
well. My ankles are weak.”

“Who said anything about ice skating?” demanded Carrie.

“Well, you were talking about ice,” retorted Mattie.

“I was thinking about the Riddle Club,” said Carrie. “If it will only
get good and cold, they won’t be able to have their silly old meetings.”

“I don’t see why,” remarked Mattie, wondering what the weather had to
do with club meetings.

“You would, if you’d do some thinking,” said her chum. “When it gets
too cold to meet in the barn, where’ll they go?”

“Oh, around to different houses, I suppose,” answered Mattie. “They’ll
do the way we do.”

“Polly Marley won’t let ’em,” was Carrie’s reply to this. “She doesn’t
like going around to different places to meet. I’ve often heard her say
so. And if they don’t meet in the barn, they won’t meet anywhere. Then,
perhaps, we’ll get a little peace. I do get so sick,” added Carrie,
“of hearing about that old Riddle Club.”

“So do I,” Mattie responded. “You’d think they had the only club in
River Bend, to hear ’em talk.”

The question of where they should hold their club meetings in cold
weather was also puzzling Polly. She knew the answer to the puzzle
would have to come from her. Margy would be the first to complain
of the discomfort of the cold barn, but the last to suggest another
meeting place. Jess was hardy and would cheerfully endure a red nose
and cold hands before she would take the trouble to move. As for the
boys, they naturally expected Polly to think things over and work plans
out, and while they would fall in with her suggestions, it was useless
to look to them for ideas.

November came in cold and gray and the month was not six days old
before the citizens of River Bend looked out one morning to find
feathery flakes floating in the air. Fathers thought of their coal-bins
and children of their sleds, but Polly’s thoughts flew to the clubroom
in the Larue barn. A meeting of the Riddle Club was scheduled for the
next day.

“Gee, isn’t it cold!” cried Artie as he and Polly started for school.

They met Jess and Ward and the Williamson twins--as usual--and the
bitter cold wind that stung their faces came straight from the river.

“I read where a man said this is going to be the coldest winter we’ve
ever had,” related Artie, opening and closing his fingers rapidly in
their woolen gloves to keep the blood circulating.

“Well, it’s cold enough right now,” declared Ward. “Of course, I like
snow and skating, but I’d rather have the mornings nice and warm.”

Fred laughed.

“You’d fix it up so we’d go to school with steam-heated overcoats and
shoes, wouldn’t you, Ward?” he teased. “And then, the moment school
closed, you’d have a nice glassy hill back right up to the door with a
sled on top ready to take you coasting.”

Ward admitted that he had something like that in mind.

“What are you thinking about, Polly?” asked Margy, curiously. “You
haven’t said a word for the last five minutes.”

“I’m wondering what we are going to do about the clubroom,” answered
Polly. “To-morrow it’s going to be as cold as ice in the barn. We
haven’t done a thing about heating it, either, except talk about it.”

“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have an oil stove,” declared Fred,
positively. “That won’t cost much, and we can take turns filling it.”

“Daddy says that we can’t have any kind of a heater in the barn,” said
Jess, mournfully. “He says the most careful children in the world could
burn a barn down without knowing they were doing it.”

“Well, the only thing I see to do, then,” said Polly, “is to wrap up
extra warm. We can’t freeze solid in an hour or two.”

“No, but I have a little cold now,” objected Margy, “and I don’t
believe Mother will want me to stay in that cold barn. You can’t be too
careful when you have a little cold.”

“You say you have a cold,” declared Fred, with brotherly frankness,
“because you want an excuse for borrowing one of Mother’s good
handkerchiefs and putting her new cologne on it.”

Margy looked at him reproachfully, but forebore to argue.

All through the morning session Polly studied the problem of a meeting
place. That is, when she was not reciting. She racked her mind to think
of somewhere they could go, but without success. As Carrie Pepper had
shrewdly said, she was not willing to “meet around” at the houses of
the various members. For one thing, Polly knew that this plan usually
meant extra work and trouble for the mothers.

“We might not always put everything back in place,” reasoned Polly.
“And the boys are _so_ hard on chairs and furniture. They don’t mean to
be, but they can’t help it. With our own furniture, it doesn’t matter,
but just suppose Artie should put his feet on those new satin chairs
Mrs. Larue just had sent home! And if we had anything to eat, I’d want
to run the carpet sweeper over the rug afterward, because I just know
there would be crumbs spilled.”

Then she was called on to go to the blackboard, and it was twenty
minutes before she had a chance to tackle the problem again.

“Oh, dear, it is really trying to snow,” said Polly to herself,
glancing from the window as she walked back to her seat. “I hoped maybe
the sun would come out and make it warmer. I don’t see what we’re going
to do with all our lovely things, if we can’t meet in the barn any
longer.”

Polly meant the treasures the Riddle Club had gathered from various
sources, some by dint of wheedling from parents who had furniture
stored in attics, some from friends made in camp, and some--best of
all--won as trophies.

“What are you going to do about the Riddle Club?” Carrie Pepper asked
unexpectedly that noon.

She and Mattie were walking behind Polly and Jess and Margy.

“Do about it?” repeated Polly, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, that barn will be like an icebox now,” said Carrie. “I was just
wondering if you were going to give up having meetings till spring.
It might not be such a bad plan--Miss Elliott said the other day that
nothing ought to be allowed to interfere with our lessons.”

“The Riddle Club doesn’t interfere with our lessons,” replied Polly,
coldly. “We agreed to stay away from meetings if our marks went below
the average. Mr. Williamson suggested that. But we have good report
cards every time--isn’t that so, Jess?”

Jess nodded. Carrie always made her feel tongue-tied.

“Well, our Conundrum Club is going to hold a meeting to-morrow, at Joe
Anderson’s house,” said Carrie. “And his mother is going to give us hot
cocoa and whipped cream and cake. We most always have something to eat
in cold weather.”

Margy looked at Polly as Carrie turned in at her gate.

“Whatever we do, we won’t give up our club,” said Margy.

“Of course we won’t,” promised Polly.

Artie had an important appointment with Ward before the afternoon
session of school--they each had three cents left over from their hoard
carefully saved for the club dues, which Fred was sure to collect the
next day--and he went back before Polly. When she reached school,
five minutes before the one o’clock bell, her eyes were bright with
excitement.

“Something--nice--to--tell--you,” she whispered across the room to
Margy, as the bell clanged and the pupils took their seats. This year,
much to the three girls’ delight, Margy had her seat in the same room
as Jess and Polly, though they did not recite together in all their
classes.

All that afternoon Polly fairly glowed. Her eyes twinkled and nothing
could ruffle her good nature, not even missing a fairly easy word in
spelling, which Carrie immediately spelled after her.

“Get the boys,” she commanded Margy, as they struggled into their coats
in the cloakroom. “I have the best news in the world to tell you!”




CHAPTER VII

A POSTPONEMENT


Margy caught Ward and Artie at the gate of the school yard and Polly
herself met Fred as he came down the stairs, his mouth puckered to
whistle as soon as he should be safely out of the door. Whistling
inside the building was forbidden.

“What is it? What is it?” cried Jess, who had caught the excitement
from Margy. “Hurry up, Polly, and tell us.”

“Well, you know that room at the back of the house we just had finished
this fall?” demanded Polly.

“The one your mother is going to have as another spare room?” asked
Jess.

“With painted furniture and a gray and pink rug?” said Margy.

“Yes. Only there isn’t going to be any gray and pink rug,” answered
Polly. “Mother told me this noon. She has talked it over with Daddy,
and she wants to wait till spring when he goes off to the Hardware
Convention. She’ll go with him and buy the furniture then and get the
latest--she said so. And what do you think?”

No one thought. They stared at the sparkling Polly.

“Mother said,” Polly announced with a rush, “that, as long as she
wasn’t going to use the room, we could have it for our clubroom this
winter!”

“Polly! How perfectly lovely!” squealed Margy, in delight.

“When did she say so?” asked Artie, this being the first time he had
heard the news.

“This noon, after you had gone,” Polly told him. “And it’s the nicest
room--three windows and a window seat and as warm as toast. The
radiator is under the window seat. There isn’t a bit of furniture in
it, so we can move our own stuff in. And it’s over the back hall, so it
won’t matter if we do make a little noise. No one will hear us.”

“I said last night I wished we had a room we could use,” declared Jess.
“But our house is so little we use every single place. In winter Dora
doesn’t go home to sleep, and that takes an extra room.”

“My goodness, Jess Larue,” said Polly, “don’t you think you’ve done
enough? We’ve had that perfectly fine room in your barn ever since the
club was started. We’ll never have as nice a place as that, and the
minute it is warm we’ll move back. But I certainly am glad we can have
this room.”

“I am, too,” declared Fred. “I say three cheers for your mother. Do you
suppose we can meet there to-morrow afternoon, Polly?”

“Well, we can, if you’re willing to help move this afternoon,” said
Polly. “I think, if every one will help, we can get everything done in
time. If there is one thing I will not stand,” she announced firmly,
“it is to meet in the room before we get our stuff moved in. I’d rather
postpone the meeting.”

“Come on,” was Fred’s reply to this speech. “What are you all standing
here for? We’ve got to move the table and the chairs and all that junk
before supper time.”

He started to run, and after him ran the other members of the Riddle
Club. The pavements were wet from the stray snow flakes which had
melted as fast as they fell, and Margy slipped once or twice, but she
never complained. She, too, felt that getting to the barn and starting
the moving was the most important thing to be considered. At a time
like this, mere legs and feet were of little consequence.

They dashed into the three houses, to tell three mothers that they
were home from school, and then dashed out again and made for the barn.
As Ward complained, pantingly climbing the loft ladder, they acted as
though the barn was on fire and they had to save their furniture from
the flames.

“Well, it gets dark so soon that we have to hurry,” said Fred. “Hurry
up and unlock the door, Ward.”

“I haven’t the key,” answered Ward. “It’s in my other pocket.”

“You mean the pocket of your other coat,” Artie corrected him.

“Well, isn’t that my other pocket?” argued Ward. “How could I have the
same pocket in my other coat that I have in this one?”

“We don’t care about your other pocket or this pocket or which pocket
is where,” broke in Fred. “Go get the key, Ward. And hurry. It isn’t
going to be so easy taking this stuff down that ladder as it was to
bring it up.”

Ward went off to get the key for the padlock, and the others sat down
in the old, dry hay to wait for him.

“Why don’t we lower the table out of the window?” suggested Artie.
“That’s the way they took the new safe into the lodge hall; they
pulled it up to the second story on a rope. If you can take something
in that way, why can’t you take it out?”

“Window’s too narrow,” Fred objected.

“If you can let it out of a window, what’s the matter with lowering it
over the loft on a rope?” said Jess, slowly.

“We could! Good for you, Jess!” cried Fred. “I’m not anxious to go down
that ladder, let me tell you, with one end of the table and some one
else at the other end liable to let the whole thing slip and knock me
off. Let’s get a rope and let the table down.”

As Margy had once disconsolately remarked, if there was one thing
that was scarce and hard to find in River Bend, it was a good rope.
It was her complaint that there was never anything on hand to serve
as a jumping rope, and the boys were always discovering that they had
no rope to use when they really needed rope. Mothers guarded their
clotheslines jealously, and woe betide the boy or girl who cut it in
two, or even chopped a tiny length off. “You’d think a clothesline was
made of gold,” to quote the exasperated Margy.

“I’ll go get a rope,” offered Artie. “Dad has some down at the store,
and he said I could have it, if I came after it. I’ll be back in a
jiffy.”

“I don’t see what Ward calls it, he is doing,” said Jess, presently.
“Even if he had to stop to get his breath, he’s had time to find that
key and be back. Perhaps I’d better go down and see if he needs me to
help him hunt.”

Fred and Margy and Polly waited in the loft till the shadows deepened
to such a dark gray that they began to think it must be nearly supper
time.

“I don’t know what you think,” said Fred. “But I know we’ve waited long
enough. I’m going in.”

Margy and Polly followed him down the ladder. To the natural shadows
of a wintry afternoon, the heavy gray snow clouds had added a deeper
tinge, and though it was only a little past four, a light in the
sewing-room of the Marley house showed that Polly’s mother had found it
necessary to have the help of artificial light in finishing her work.

“Let’s go over and look at the room,” suggested Polly, and the three
went in the side door and up the back stairs, which brought them to the
room set aside for their use.

“It’s fine,” commented Fred. “Just fine, Polly. We’re mighty lucky to
have it. There’s room for everything, and that shelf will be just the
place to put the loving cup.”

Polly was pleased. She had been so delighted to have the room to offer
the Riddle Club that she had taken their pleasure for granted; and now
Ward and Jess and Artie were apparently making no effort to help her
take possession. However, if the critical Fred approved of the room, it
must be all right.

“Hello!” said Mrs. Marley, passing through the hall and seeing them
sitting on the window seat. “Why, I thought this was the big afternoon!
Where are all the others? And you haven’t moved a thing!”

“Ward went to get the key and he didn’t come back,” explained Polly,
dully. “And Artie went down to the store to get some rope, and he
hasn’t come back, either. And we waited and waited and waited for them.”

“Why, Polly dear, didn’t you go after them?” asked Mrs. Marley, in
surprise. “Of course something has happened. You mustn’t be so ready to
believe that it’s their fault. They’re just as much interested in the
Riddle Club as you are, dear.”

“No, they’re not,” said Polly. “They like it as long as I’ll do all the
work and the planning, but they won’t do a thing to help.”

“And this isn’t the first time Ward’s gone off and forgotten to come
back,” declared Margy. “He always thinks there is plenty of time for
everything.”

“There they are now,” said Mrs. Marley, as the doorbell sounded. “I’ll
go down and send them up.”

Ward and Jess came stamping up the stairs, with Artie following them.
He carried a large coil of rope over his arm.

“What you doing up here?” asked Ward. “We went up in the loft and you
weren’t there. Then we went to Williamson’s, and you weren’t there,
either.”

“How are we going to get anything moved, if you don’t do anything?”
said Jess.

“Do anything!” exploded Margy. “Where’ve you been all this time? Here
it is half-past four, and you talk about us doing something! Where have
you been all this time?”

“Is it half-past four?” asked Jess. “Why, Dora was baking cookies and
we stayed to watch her a little while. She said we could scrape the
bowl, but we didn’t wait for that. We hurried back as fast as we could.”

Polly said nothing at all. Fred glanced at her uncertainly.

“What happened to you, Artie?” he said.

“Why, nothing,” Artie replied. “I went down to the store and got the
rope; here it is.”

“Did it take you an hour?” asked Fred.

“An hour? I wasn’t gone an hour,” Artie protested. “All I did was to
turn the emery wheel for Mr. Kelper a little while; but it wasn’t an
hour.”

“Come on and let’s do the moving,” urged Ward. “What are you waiting
for? It’s almost dark now.”

“It’s too dark to begin getting things down from the loft,” said Polly,
quietly. “And, anyway, there’s no hurry; we can’t have a meeting till
after Thanksgiving.”

“Why, to-morrow!” said Jess. “It’s our day to-morrow, Polly.”

“But we won’t be moved,” Polly pointed out. “We can’t get our things
in here and in place and have a meeting, too. And if we go over our
regular day we have to wait till the next meeting. I said I won’t hold
a session without everything in order, and I won’t.”

“Are you mad, Polly?” asked Jess, anxiously. “Perhaps we didn’t hurry
right back, but we meant to.”

“No, I’m not mad,” said Polly, calmly. “I’m only telling you that there
won’t be any meeting to-morrow. We can move to-morrow, if you want to.”

“But let’s move now, Polly,” urged Artie. “I have the rope and
everything. There’s lots of time.”

“We could start, Polly,” said Fred.

“I think Polly is exactly right,” declared Margy. “It’s almost dark
now, and we couldn’t see to get up and down the loft ladder. Besides, I
nearly froze to death waiting up there for you. It will serve you right
to have to wait till after Thanksgiving.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait, too,” Jess retorted.

Polly, usually the gentlest of girls, could, when aroused, be like “a
little cake of cement,” her father said. If she said that no meeting
of the Riddle Club was to be called till after Thanksgiving, the other
members knew that no amount of persuasion could make her change her
mind. Jess was not exactly easy in her conscience, for she had lingered
beyond all reason; and Ward and Artie, too, knew that they had been
thoughtless and selfish to keep the rest waiting.

“We’ll start to move the first thing after school to-morrow,” said
Jess. “And I’ll bring the key with me, so we’ll be sure we have it.”

Fred thought wistfully of the lost dues, but he resisted the temptation
to speak of them.




CHAPTER VIII

MOVING DAY


As soon as school was out the next day, the Riddle Club members hurried
to the Larue barn. True to her promise, Jess produced the key and there
was no delay about getting into the clubroom.

“Br-rr!” shivered Margy, as the door was opened.

They had not dreamed the room could be so cold. With the window and
door both closed, no fresh air could warm the atmosphere, as it did in
the barn below where, even though there was no heat, it usually felt
several degrees warmer than the outside temperature.

The threatened snowstorm had not come, but the day was raw and cold,
and each of the children found a sweater under his or her coat most
comfortable. Margy, who perhaps felt the cold more than any of the
others, was silently thankful that they would not have to hold another
meeting in the hayloft room.

“We’d better take the table first, I think,” said Fred. “That’s the
largest piece of furniture, and if any one gets hurt moving that, we
won’t miss him so much with the other things.”

“Huh?” inquired Ward, anxiously.

“Well, you know yourself that if the loving cup fell over and sprained
one of your fingers you wouldn’t be any help in moving the table,”
explained Fred. “But if we let the table fall on you, after it’s on the
barn floor, and it breaks your leg, there’ll still be plenty of us left
to lift the loving cup. Don’t you see?”

Apparently Ward saw, for he asked no further questions, but helped, at
Fred’s direction, tie the rope about the table and knot it securely.

“Do we have to take it in the second-story window of the house?” asked
Polly, watching the boys as they fastened the rope.

“Oh, we can get it up the stairs all right,” Fred assured her. “It’s
only because the loft ladder is so rickety that we’re letting it down
this way.”

When they came to take the table out through the doorway, a new
obstacle arose. The piece of furniture stuck.

“It _must_ go through,” said Fred, as though that settled it.

“It came through,” declared Margy, in quite as positive a tone. “I saw
it come through.”

“Well, it won’t go through now,” said Ward, wiping his red face with
his handkerchief. “Try it yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

Jess giggled a little.

“A table couldn’t grow fat, could it?” she suggested. “Maybe that
table’s gained in weight or something, since we moved it in.”

“No, I know what the trouble is,” said Polly. “When you brought it up
here, it just scraped through the doorway--don’t you remember? The boys
had to be extra careful not to get their fingers caught, the space was
so narrow between the frame and the table.”

“But it won’t even scrape through now,” Artie objected, frowning.

“That’s because you have that great rope wrapped around it,” said
Polly. “It hits the sides of the door frame. You’ll have to take it off
and push the table through.”

Grumbling, the boys set to work to untie the rope. This was not easy,
for Ward and Artie had put their best efforts into those knots, and
they were fearful and wonderful to behold. Then, too, in the pushing
and shoving exerted by the movers, the rope had twisted, so that the
knots were hard to get at. Artie finally succeeded in unloosening one
and Fred unfastened the other, and they pulled the rope out.

“Now I’ll push and you two pull,” said Fred, who would not allow the
girls to help.

The table stuck again. Fred gave a violent shove. Artie and Ward felt a
sharp prod in their ribs, and both went over backward.

“Laugh if you want to,” said the indignant Artie, rising and looking
reproachfully at the girls, who stood behind Fred. “I don’t see
anything funny myself. It’s a wonder that we don’t go through this fool
floor.”

The floor of the loft was not tight, and in many places the cracks were
wide enough for a very thin person’s foot. Some parts of the floor
were merely of poles laid closely together to hold the hay. When Ward
had been a very little boy, he had once fallen between these poles and
landed on a pile of hay on the main floor, a much frightened lad.

“We didn’t mean to laugh,” apologized Polly. “But you looked so funny!
You went down together just like two wooden soldiers.”

With much pushing and pulling and some scolding from Fred, the table
was dragged to the edge of the loft and the rope again tied around it,
ready to be lowered.

“What do we tie it to?” asked Fred suddenly. “Haven’t got the
confidence in your gun that you have, Artie.”

Artie grinned. He had fallen over a bluff in camp the past summer, and
a rope tied to his old gun stuck in the ground had proved to be his
ladder to safety. But even Artie could not trust his gun to stand the
weight of the table.

“We can hold it,” said Ward, confidently. “The three of us can do it
easily.”

“If the rope gets to going, it will skin our hands,” Fred warned him.

“Don’t stand too near the edge, or you’ll be dragged over,” said Polly,
who was eager to help in some way.

“Dump it over,” Artie advised, carelessly. “You can’t hurt a heavy
table like that.”

“Much you know about it,” said Fred. “One of these legs is likely to
crack off. Well, I suppose, as Ward says, the three of us can hold it.”

He dragged the table nearer the edge and took up the rope, standing
back about two feet. Ward and Artie, in the order named, took up the
rope, standing about the same distance from each other.

“I’ll give you the word,” said Fred, beginning to move the table nearer
and nearer, pushing cautiously with his foot.

Ward felt a stinging sensation in his eye--a grain of dust, most
likely. He rubbed frantically, while a cousin of the same mischievous
dust atom flew on to Artie and caused him to sneeze tremendously. As
every one will tell you, it is quite impossible to keep your mind on
any job and sneeze at the same time. Small wonder that Artie forgot the
rope, as Ward had done.

The table teetered a minute over the edge of the loft, then dropped.
Fred felt as though his arms were being pulled from the sockets for one
brief moment, and then the strain slackened. He looked back. The three
girls were holding the rope, their feet braced as they pulled. Ward and
Artie stood staring at him.

“Grab that rope!” shouted Fred. “What are you thinking of? Grab hold!
Do you want the thing to go bang?”

Ward and Artie “came to” with a jerk and grasped the rope. Fred
continued to lower the table gently, paying out the rope carefully,
until he felt it touch the barn floor.

“All right!” he said glumly. “And small thanks to you boys. If it
hadn’t been for the girls, we would have had one smashed table.”

Ward and Artie were eager to make up for their lapse, and they offered
to carry the table into the house alone.

“We’ll get everything downstairs first,” Fred decreed. “Then all we’ll
have to do will be to carry the stuff in.”

“Somebody ought to beat the rug,” said Margy. “Mother always beats her
rugs when she moves them, even if it’s only from one room to another.”

No one seemed very anxious to do any rug-beating, though Ward offered
to “shake it out of the window.”

“A good housekeeper doesn’t shake rugs out of the window,” said Polly.
“I’ll clean the rug myself.”

“Well, housework is girls’ work, anyway,” said Ward, placidly.

“I won’t clean the rug!” retorted Polly. “Mother has a man come and
beat her rugs--so there.”

“The rug is clean, so stop fussing,” commanded Fred. “We haven’t used
it much. I’ll get a broom and sweep it off and it will be all right.”

One by one they carried down the treasures from their clubroom--the
silver loving cup; the six chairs; the framed sketch, made by the
artist, Miss Perry; Artie’s gun; and the radio set. This last was to
go in the Larue living-room for the winter. It would not be needed in
the clubroom, for Artie had his own set, as did Fred. They left the
curtains, because Mrs. Marley had all her windows curtained alike, and
the new room already had ruffled white draperies screening the windows
above the window seat.

“I hope Carrie Pepper knows we have a clubroom,” said Margy, as she
helped Polly take down the pennant tacked in place on the loft-room
wall.

“She will know it, if she doesn’t now,” declared Jess. “That girl hears
everything, sooner or later.”

They could hardly blame Carrie if she learned about the new clubroom,
for ten minutes later Mrs. Pepper came out to feed her hens and
discovered something unusual going on in the barn.

“What are you doing, Fred Williamson?” she asked Fred, seeing him
start, whistling, for the Marley house, two chairs over his back.

“We’re moving, Mrs. Pepper,” he answered, politely.

“Moving? Where to? Is Mr. Larue moving?” asked Mrs. Pepper, forgetting
to sprinkle any more corn.

“No, Mr. Larue isn’t moving. The Riddle Club is,” Fred explained.
“We’re going to hold our meetings at the Marleys’ till warm weather
comes again. You ought to see the dandy room we’re going to have!”

“I pity Mrs. Marley with a parcel of young ones racketing over her
house,” sighed Mrs. Pepper. “I suppose she thinks she can keep an eye
on you better. But I wouldn’t give much for her furniture by spring
time.”

“We have our own furniture,” said Jess, indignantly. She had come
up with Fred in time to hear this last remark. “We stay in our own
clubroom for meetings, and we don’t hurt a thing.”

“Here, chick, chick,” called Mrs. Pepper, remembering her hungry flock.
“No, I don’t suppose you intend to do any damage. But the time Carrie
had the Conundrum Club at our house, it took me a week to get the place
to rights again; and some of the grease spots never did come out of the
rug.”

Jess opened her mouth to say that the Riddle Club didn’t spill grease
on any one’s carpets, but she thought in time that that might sound as
though she were criticizing the Conundrum Club.

“What a nice turkey!” she said instead.

“He will be nice,” admitted Mrs. Pepper, “when I get him fattened up,
if I ever do. I can’t abide a turkey for Thanksgiving that I don’t
fatten myself. I bought this cheap, because he’s so skinny, but I aim
to have him as fat as butter by Thanksgiving morning.”

Jess went on with the rug she was carrying, but she had to stop on the
side steps of the Marley house, for the three boys were getting the
table up the stairs with much noise and some laughter.

“What would they do if they had really to move!” said Polly, joining
Jess on the steps. “And to think we’ll have to go through with this
again in the spring. Did you see Mrs. Pepper’s turkey?”

“Yes, she says she’s getting it fat,” responded Jess, absently. “Say,
Polly, has your mother said anything about Thanksgiving yet?”

“No, she hasn’t.” Polly’s reply was prompt. “She hasn’t said a word.
And last year by this time we knew where we were going, didn’t we?”

Unless one of the families was going away over the holiday or had
invited relatives, it was the custom of the Marleys, the Larues, and
the Williamsons to have Thanksgiving dinner together at one of their
homes.

“I think it’s kind of queer,” said Jess, soberly.




CHAPTER IX

THE SECRET IS OUT


The boys came panting downstairs, having landed the table in its new
home safely. They found Polly and Jess on the steps.

“We’re coming right up,” said Polly, hastily. “We were just talking
about Thanksgiving.”

Margy joined them, the loving cup in her arms.

“What about Thanksgiving?” she asked curiously.

“Oh, we were saying how queer it is we haven’t heard yet where we’re
going for dinner,” said Polly.

Margy looked at her brother.

“Fred knows something about Thanksgiving he won’t tell,” she
complained. “I think he’s awfully mean.”

“What do you know, Fred?” wheedled Polly. “Tell us--please.”

Fred’s face turned a little red.

“I don’t believe he knows a thing that we don’t,” said Ward.

“I do, too!” cried Fred. Then he stopped.

“I think you might tell,” said Jess, pensively.

“I promised I wouldn’t. Now will you be quiet?” said the harassed Fred.

“Is it about all of us? Are we in it?” asked Margy, quickly.

“How could you be in a Thanksgiving dinner?” asked Fred.

“Don’t be silly--you know what I mean. Shall we all know what you know
when we do know?” returned Margy.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but you won’t get a word out
of me,” announced Fred, firmly. “I happened to overhear some talk I
wasn’t supposed to hear, and then Dad told me all the rest of it and
made me promise not to tell.”

“Will you tell just one thing?” coaxed Artie.

Fred had a shrewd suspicion that Artie could find out more, if he
wished, than the rest of the children.

“Don’t you go asking me questions,” he ordered. “I said I wasn’t going
to tell, and that settles it.”

“But, Fred, tell us just this one thing,” insisted Artie: “When shall
we know about--about it?”

“The week before Thanksgiving. Now I hope you’re satisfied,” Fred
retorted. “I don’t see any reason for standing here talking all day;
if we’re going to move, why not move?”

Acting on this gentle hint, they went to work again, and before dark
the new clubroom was in apple-pie order. Very trim and clean and neat
it looked, too, and very warm and cozy it was. Fond as they all were
of the little loft room in the barn, they could not deny that it was a
bleak place in winter.

Mrs. Marley had given the key to Polly, and had assured her that not an
outsider would be allowed over the threshold.

“That means, of course,” she told her daughter, “that you’ll have to
take care of the room. You girls will have to get together and clean it
now and then, but a room that isn’t used regularly will stay clean a
long time. You can dust it thoroughly before each meeting.”

Polly loyally passed over the key to Ward, because he had always locked
the padlock on the barn-room door. She knew he liked this duty and felt
proud to be intrusted with it.

It was fortunate that the Riddle Club knew they were to have news the
week before Thanksgiving, because they would have found it hard work
waiting. As it was, each time “Thanksgiving” was mentioned in school or
at home they looked anxious.

“I do think it is _too_ queer,” said Jess, for the twentieth time, as
she walked home from school with Margy and Polly. “Carrie Pepper’s
mother is going to have six aunts come to their house to dinner. And we
don’t know a thing.”

As she spoke, they saw Fred come dashing from the house and give the
signal that never failed to produce Artie and Ward if they were within
hearing distance. It was a piercing whistle produced in some mysterious
manner by putting three fingers in one’s mouth.

Two ear-splitting blasts answered Fred’s whistle, and Artie and Ward
shot out of the Larue barn, where they had been engaged in some
interesting experiment. Artie always had an experiment or two on hand.

“Hurry up! He wants us,” said Polly, as Fred spied them and waved.

The three girls ran the rest of the way and reached the Williamson gate
breathless.

“You know Thanksgiving?” said Fred.

They nodded, dumbly.

“Well, we’re going up to Tom’s Island!” said Fred, who certainly did
not believe in wasting words.

“Tom’s Island!” echoed Polly. “But it’s winter!”

“All the more fun. Wait till you hear,” said Fred. “We’re going up in
the car Wednesday night and stay over till Sunday. Think of the sport!
If the lake is frozen, we can skate or walk on the ice, and maybe we
can rig up a sail and have ice boating.”

“I’d rather have it snow,” said Artie, seriously. “Let’s take our
sleds.”

Margy shivered.

“It will be awfully cold,” she complained. “There isn’t any heater.
How’ll we keep from freezing?”

“Oh, we’ll run all day and take a hot brick to bed at night,” said the
practical Jess.

“I think it will be great! Is that your secret, Fred?” asked Polly.

“Yes,” admitted Fred.

“You see,” he went on, “I was back of the sofa, hunting for my cap,
when Mother and Dad came into the parlor and began talking about it. I
heard some before I could wriggle out, and then they told me the rest
and I promised not to tell. They wanted to get all the plans fixed
before they let us know.”

“And we’re all going? What a lark!” cried Jess. “We never did that
before.”

“Well, you’re all going,” said Fred. “But Mr. and Mrs. Larue and Mr.
and Mrs. Marley are going to Rye to have dinner with Mr. Field and
his sister and his two cousins--you know, Mr. Kirby and Mr. Adams. Mr.
Kirby planned it. He wrote and asked us all to come, every single one
of us.”

“My goodness, that would have been--two--six--ten of us; no, twelve,”
said Margy, calculating swiftly.

“That’s what Mother said--that twelve was too many,” Fred replied. “So
she talked it over with the other mothers, and at first, Mother told
me, they thought they’d all go and leave us at home. Then they decided
that was kind of mean on Thanksgiving, so Mother and Dad offered to
take us all to the island. You know Dad likes to be outdoors. Mr. Kirby
wrote and said that plan was all right, but Dad and Mother must come
to dinner New Year’s. He asked them for Christmas, but of course they
couldn’t go away from home on Christmas.”

“Of course not,” echoed Polly. “So we’re going with your father and
mother in the car. I’m so excited, I can hardly wait!”

“I’m glad to know what we’re going to do,” said Margy, sighing as
though a burden had been taken from her shoulders.

“Now don’t----” Polly instructed her younger brother, “don’t, Artie,
whatever you do, tell any one who belongs to the Conundrum Club where
we’re going. It would be just like them to want to go, too.”

Artie said he would be careful, but it was lucky he had to memorize a
verse to recite at the Thanksgiving exercises. Artie loved to talk, and
he was apt to talk to any friendly listener.

It was not till the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving Day that
Carrie Pepper heard of the plan. School was to close at noon, and Mr.
and Mrs. Larue and Mr. and Mrs. Marley had gone off in the Larue car at
seven o’clock that morning. Rye was over the state line and some two
hundred miles from River Bend.

“I saw your folks going off,” remarked Carrie, sociably, joining the
six chums as they set off for school at half-past eight. “What are you
going to do for dinner to-morrow?”

“My mother’s at home,” said Margy, with dignity. “And so is Dad.”

“Oh! Then are they all coming to your house?” asked Carrie. “My mother
is going to have a lot of company, too. She’s going to kill the turkey
this afternoon. He’s nice and fat, too.”

“We’re going to carry the turkey with us,” said Artie, innocently. That
was enough for Carrie.

“Carry it with you?” she asked. “Why, where are you going?”

“Up to Tom’s Island,” said Fred, darting a severe look at Artie. “We’re
going up in the car and stay till Sunday.”

“I never heard of going to a summer camp in the winter time,” declared
Carrie. “You’ll probably freeze, and it will serve you right.”

But the minute she reached school she told Mattie Helms and Joe
Anderson, and in less than an hour every girl and boy in the school
knew where the Riddle Club intended to spend Thanksgiving.

The six members hurried home as soon as school was dismissed. They were
to leave at half-past three, and there was still some packing to be
done. Mrs. Williamson had set her heart on taking a full Thanksgiving
dinner, and there were enough cooking utensils left at the camp, safely
packed in strong, dry boxes, to cook it properly. The last thing Mr.
Marley had ordered done before leaving the island in the summer, was to
have Mr. Mains bring a load of firewood and stack it under a shelter.
He had foreseen that they might wish to visit the camp in winter.

Each member of the club was to take a flannel sleeping bag, a hot water
bottle, a pair of blankets, and rubber boots. Even the girls in River
Bend owned rubber boots, for they wore them to school during the winter
storms. Mr. Williamson said they would be taken for gypsies if any one
saw the back of the car, for comfortables and blankets were piled high
around the suitcases and the one sled that Fred had insisted must go.

“I ought to be thankful, I suppose, that you don’t each clamor to take
a sled,” said Mr. Williamson, good-naturedly. “No, Artie, positively no
ice skates allowed. It won’t be cold enough for that. It may snow, but
even if the lake froze over, it wouldn’t be thick enough to bear you so
early in the season.”

So the skates were left out, and that gave room enough--so Mrs.
Williamson always declared--to put the six children in.

Jess and Ward were upstairs, getting into their heavy sweaters, and Mr.
Williamson was backing the heavily loaded car out of the garage, when
they heard Mrs. Pepper shrieking.

“Catch him! Catch him! There he goes!” they heard her cry.

Then came the sharp tinkle of broken glass.

“What’s the matter?” cried Ward, running for the stairs and down them
as fast as he could go, Jess at his heels.

Mrs. Pepper met him on the lawn. She presented a terrifying sight, for
the shawl, in which she had muffled her head, had slipped over one
ear and gave her a reckless look. In her right hand she carried a
hatchet--a “tomahawk” the excited Ward dubbed it--and this she waved
fiercely.

“Where’d he go?” she demanded of the frightened children.

“Where’d what go?” stammered Jess, for Ward, as usual, had lost his
breath.

“The turkey! I tipped the coop over--I’ve had him shut up for a week to
give him the final fattening--and he was off like a streak. He came in
this direction. I saw him fly over the hedge.”

“I heard glass breaking,” said Jess, doubtfully, turning to stare at
the house.

Down the steps of the Marley house came Polly and Artie, and around
from behind the car in front of their house, came Fred and Margy.

“Most ready?” they called. “Mother’s putting her hat on.”

“One of the parlor windows is broken,” said Jess, suddenly. “Do you
suppose the turkey did that?”




CHAPTER X

IN CAMP AGAIN


Though Ward was sure a turkey couldn’t break a window pane and Fred and
Polly and Margy and Artie, who joined them, were doubtful, Mrs. Pepper
said that, for her part, she knew the turkey was in the Larue house.

“And you’ll just have to help me get him out,” said she. “I have
company coming to-morrow and I have to get that turkey killed and
dressed to-night. Carrie is off with some of her friends--instead of
helping me--and Mr. Pepper won’t be home till the late boat. I’ll pay
for the broken glass, of course; but you’ll have to help me take that
turkey away.”

A turkey hunt promised some excitement, and the six children went into
the house determined to find the missing bird. Mrs. Pepper implored
them not to chase him, when they found him, “for,” she said, “I’ve been
feeding him on English walnuts and chocolates for a week, and I don’t
want him to lose his fat. A scrawny turkey is something I can’t abide.”

“I feel as though I was hunting for a burglar,” Polly whispered to
Margy, as they tiptoed through the lower rooms.

“So do I,” answered Margy. “Oh! What was that?”

It was nothing but a window shade that had rattled against the pane,
blown by the draft which came through the broken window. Dora, the
Larue maid, had gone to her own home to stay over the holiday, and
there was no one but the searchers in the house.

“Well, he isn’t on the first floor,” said Fred, when all the rooms had
been carefully examined. “Artie and I will go up to the attic and have
a look around there. A turkey might feel more at home in an attic.”

Mrs. Pepper didn’t seem convinced, but she went on with her hunt
and Fred and Artie went to the attic. The door opening on the steep
stairway was half open, and as Fred jerked it back, something flapped
in his face.

Fred was no coward, but he jumped back with a startled cry. A large
turkey scuttled up the attic stairs.

“He’s up here!” shouted Fred. “Come on--we’ll get him! He’s up here!”

The other children came running, and Mrs. Pepper toiled after them.

“Don’t chase it,” she kept saying. “Don’t chase it. You’ll run all the
fat off it.”

“You stay down here, Ward, to head him off,” directed Fred. “We’ll go
up and get him started, and when you hear me telling you to open the
door, you do it slowly. We only want to drive him back to the coop.”

Ward seemed to understand. He took up his station by the door which
Fred closed as he followed the rest up the attic stairs.

“There’s Mr. Williamson whistling,” said Ward. “I’ll bet he’s ready to
go. He doesn’t know where we are.”

“I’ll go and tell him,” promised Mrs. Pepper. “You stay right where you
are, Ward. He’ll wait for you when he knows you’re doing something to
help me. I couldn’t get that turkey out of the attic alone in a month
of Sundays.”

Mrs. Pepper hurried off. She was short and stout, and Ward had to admit
that she would have found turkey-chasing hard work with no younger feet
and hands to help her.

Ward, listening at the door, heard the sound of quick footsteps over
his head, a shout from Fred and a burst of laughter from Artie. Then
the footsteps began to run, and Ward guessed correctly that they were
chasing the turkey over the attic floor. Margy gave an excited shriek,
and then an avalanche seemed to be coming down the uncarpeted stairs.

“Open the door!” called Fred. “Open it, quick!”

Ward was so excited that he forgot to open the door slowly. He flung it
back with a jerk and an angry and frightened turkey spread its wings
and sailed over his head, while Fred, stumbling, fell over Artie and
the two boys and Jess came down in a heap on the protesting Ward.

“Catch him!” cried Polly, from the top of the stairs. “He’s going
downstairs again. Catch him!”

In a moment the three boys and Jess were on their feet, and, joined by
Margy and Polly, they rushed pell-mell down the front stairs. The door
in the hall was open and Mrs. Pepper stood talking to Mr. Williamson on
the porch. The grown-ups caught a glimpse of a flying brown body and
then a colorful flash as six gay-colored sweaters dashed past them.
Then the chase headed for the Pepper yard.

“Corn!” cried Mrs. Pepper. “Show him some corn and he’ll walk into the
chicken house.”

Polly dashed around to the chicken house and caught up a measure of
corn lying on a grain bin. She ran out into the yard and shook this
invitingly. Dozens of hens gathered around her, and, sure enough, the
fugitive came, too.

Careful not to spill a grain, Polly walked backward into the chicken
house, and the moment the gobbler stepped over the sill, she scattered
the corn with a lavish hand. As his long neck bent to eat the grains,
Polly slipped out and bolted the door.

They were half an hour late in starting, but the richer by an extra
fruit cake Mrs. Pepper pressed upon them.

The drive to Lake Bassing was made in good time. It was a cold day, but
tucked in the tonneau with the robes, the girls and boys were warm and
comfortable.

Lake Bassing, in the winter, was a very different town from the one
they had known in the summer season. Some of the houses were closed,
and there was no cheerful Dick Hare and his bus to greet them. Mr.
Williamson did not stop in town, but drove straight to the bridge that
led to Tom’s Island.

“It feels like snow,” he explained, as he helped them out, “and we want
to get settled in camp before it is pitch dark. What’s the matter,
Polly? Stiff?”

Polly was a little cramped and cold from sitting still so long, but
as soon as she got down and began to walk, she was all right. They all
helped to carry the things across the bridge, and then Fred and his
father ran the car down to the Meade farm, where they were to keep it
in the farmer’s garage.

By the time they had walked back to the island, Mrs. Williamson had a
fire built in the kitchen stove and one in the funny little wood stove
that had been set up in the mess-house. The girls were spreading the
blankets on the cots, and Artie and Ward, having brought in wood, were
pumping two pails of fresh water.

They were all so sleepy that they decided to tumble into bed and
forego the campfire that night. With the hot water bottles, which
Mrs. Williamson filled from the teakettle, and the sleeping bags and
blankets, they were as comfortable as could be, when tucked in, and
were asleep almost before they had finished saying “good-night.”

Artie was the first to wake in the morning. He opened one eye, glanced
around, trying to remember where he was, and then, happening to see
through the open end of the tent, he shrieked in delight.

“Fred! Ward! Wake up! It snowed!” he cried.

That roused the camp, and the six chums dressed in such haste it is
doubtful if they missed the steam heat of their bedrooms at home. The
girls came out of their tent at the same moment the boys stepped from
theirs, and a royal snowball fight was on before breakfast.

“Could you consider an armistice--for flap-jacks?” called Mr.
Williamson, from the door of the kitchen lean-to.

Could they? You might have thought they had never had anything to eat
since the summer before, to see them at that breakfast table. Mrs.
Williamson insisted on baking cakes till no one could eat a morsel
more, and then the boys made her sit down, while Polly, under her
directions, mixed more batter and baked a fresh and hot supply for
the jolly cook. The three boys took turns carrying them in, and Mrs.
Williamson said she felt as a queen must feel with some one to wait on
her.

After breakfast there was the dinner to be considered. Mrs. Williamson
had done nearly everything at home the day before, and after more wood
and water had been brought in and Polly and Margy had set the table
with a clean cloth and the pretty favors Mr. Marley had given them in
a box before he left, the children were told to go off and coast till
they were called.

“I’ll ring the old cowbell as a signal,” said Mrs. Williamson,
pointing to an old bell that hung on a nail in the kitchen.

Mr. Williamson stayed with her, and the rest went off with Fred’s sled
to find a good coasting hill.

“We can’t go off the island, or we won’t hear the bell,” said Polly.

Artie was for coasting down the bluff he had fallen over. “That,” he
remarked, engagingly, “would be even more exciting.”

“Yes, and when you landed in that cold water, I guess you’d find it
exciting,” observed Fred. “We couldn’t pull you out with a rope,
either, because you’d drown before we could get a rope.”

However, it was not necessary to go over the bluff, for they found
that the gradual ascent to it formed a hill that was steep enough
to offer good coasting. Taking turns with the sled, they coasted to
their hearts’ content, and when the cowbell called them to dinner they
brought rosy cheeks and huge appetites to the table.

The turkey was the brownest, the cranberry jelly the reddest, that
they had ever seen. And they were allowed both kinds of pie--mince and
pumpkin--because Mr. Williamson said that playing outdoors so much
would keep them from getting ill, no matter how much dinner they ate.
Wasn’t that an understanding remark? As Artie said, it just showed you
what kind of a man Mr. Williamson was!

There was a long hill back of the Meade farmhouse, and here Mr.
Williamson took them all that afternoon. It was the kind of hill that
took your breath away, going down it on a sled, long and steep and with
a dip in the middle that made your heart come up in your mouth, so
Margy said. The girls couldn’t help screaming each time they went down,
but they wouldn’t have stayed away for the world.

When it was too dark to coast any longer, they went back to camp and
the boys built a huge bonfire. They had cocoa, steaming hot, in their
tin cups and had turkey sandwiches and ate outdoors, grouped around the
fire “just like explorers,” Artie said.

“The nicest Thanksgiving I ever had,” said Ward, sleepily, getting into
his flannel bag that night.

And Artie echoed him, more sleepily still.

Perhaps it was the snow that made Artie dream of Christmas. At any
rate, he sat up in bed the next morning and shouted across to Fred that
he heard sleighbells.

“Go to sleep,” said Fred, drowsily. “You’re dreaming.”

“I do, too, hear ’em!” Artie insisted. “There, Fred Williamson! I
guess you’ll believe me now!”

“Hello! Hello!” bellowed a hearty voice, and sleighbells crashed as the
voice shouted “Whoa!”

“It isn’t Christmas,” Fred heard Artie mutter to himself, and that sent
the older boy into fits of laughter.

“You bet it isn’t Christmas,” Fred declared, and not for anything in
the world would he have admitted that the same thought had crossed his
mind--a picture of gay and gallant Santa Claus, clad in a jolly red
suit, driving his reindeer over the snow.

Ward, who didn’t mind the cold, had hopped out of his cot and was
leaping, like an antelope, toward the tent door, his sleeping bag a
decided handicap.

“It’s Mr. Meade,” he reported, after a brief look. “He’s got two horses
harnessed to a long bobsled--at least it looks like a bobsled. Mr.
Williamson is down talking to him. Hurry and get dressed!”




CHAPTER XI

ARTIE’S ADVENTURE


The way those boys shot into their clothes would have been a revelation
to their mothers, who sometimes had to call them three times before
they came down to breakfast on a school morning. In less than five
minutes they were down at the bridge and across it.

“Morning!” said Mr. Meade, heartily. “Thought you’d be up. I’m going
up in the woods to cut logs, and I says to my wife, ‘If those children
haven’t been up in the woods in a deep snow, they might like the trip.’”

“They haven’t had breakfast yet,” said Mr. Williamson, smiling.

“I’ll wait,” returned Mr. Meade. “Winter time we can wait and be
neighborly, but, I declare, in the summer I don’t have a moment to
spare to go to a wedding!”

He tied his horses and went back to the camp where Mrs. Williamson and
the girls had breakfast ready. They insisted he must eat with them,
and as he had had the first meal by lamp-light, he was able to eat a
second breakfast comfortably.

“Mother packed us a lunch, so you don’t have to bother,” he told Mrs.
Williamson, and, sure enough, there was a large basket under the seat
of the sleigh.

What a trip that was--along snow-covered roads, the sleighbells ringing
and the children singing in tune to the bells. They met few teams and
they each took turns driving the steady pair of farm horses whose
flying feet seemed to skim the white roadway.

“How awfully still it is!” said Margy, when they turned into the narrow
trail that led through the woods.

It was still and it was beautiful--a mantle of spotless snow over the
ground and every little twig and bush draped in white. There were
the tracks of little wood creatures between some of the trees, and a
squirrel dived into a stump as Fred came suddenly upon it.

“Are you going to chop Christmas trees?” asked Artie, who couldn’t get
away from the idea of Christmas.

“No, I’m going to haul down wood to be chopped up. That’s my main
winter work,” Mr. Meade explained.

The logs had been cut earlier in the year, and the sled had to be
driven slowly through the woods, stopping at each pile of timber which
Mr. Meade loaded on. Fred was allowed to drive and very proud he felt.
He had intended to have a boat on the river when he grew up, but now he
felt that he might like to be a farmer and “get the wood out” in the
depth of winter.

When the sled was fairly well loaded, Mr. Meade built a fire and they
sat around it to eat their lunch. The horses had feed-bags and ate
placidly, apparently not affected by the cold.

Lunch over, the fire was carefully put out, every trace of it buried
deep under the snow, and they drove on. They stopped to get two more
piles of logs, and then drove out without turning.

“It’s a longer way around, but the road’s pretty,” said Mr. Meade, who
seemed to be having as good a time as any of the children.

The six sat perched up on the logs--having solemnly promised not to
fall off--and pretended they were explorers going through a new country.

“I wonder if it snowed in River Bend,” said Ward.

“Probably not,” Mr. Meade answered. “Your town is kind of protected,
and you don’t get near the sweep of weather we do. It’s always from
three to five degrees colder up here at the lake than it is down with
you.”

Polly looked around suddenly at Ward.

“I thought Artie was sitting next to you,” she said.

“He--why, he _was_!” cried Ward. “He must have fallen off! Mr. Meade!
Oh, Mr. Meade!”

The farmer looked up calmly. He was sitting down under the logs, which
projected beyond his head.

“Well?” he inquired pleasantly.

“Artie Marley!” gasped Ward. “He’s fallen off.”

Mr. Meade reined in his team and stood up, his eyes searching the road
which they had just come over. The children stood up, too, and tried to
see, but there was nothing but an unbroken expanse of whiteness.

“I don’t see how he could fall off without saying a word,” observed Mr.
Meade. “But if he isn’t here, he must be somewhere else. Hang on now,
because I’m going to make the turn--if I can,” he added.

He tried, but the long, loaded sled wouldn’t swing easily, and it
couldn’t be backed as a wagon could. Then, too, the farmer was afraid
the load might shift, and he couldn’t risk overturning five children
and having a pile of heavy logs fall on top of them.

“Can’t make it,” he said, when he had pulled the front runners around
so that the road was blocked. “Some one will have to go back and hunt
for him. I don’t dare leave you alone with the team, or I’d go. I think
you two boys will be the ones. Don’t go off the road, and if you need
help, shout and I’ll hear you.”

“We’ll all go,” said the anxious Polly. “Perhaps he’s buried in a drift
and can’t get out.”

“There are no bad drifts,” Mr. Meade assured her. “It snowed nearly all
night, but there wasn’t any wind. I wouldn’t say there was enough snow
to even cover a boy, let alone bury him.”

The five children set off over the road they had just traveled, to
search for the missing Artie. It seemed a very lonely road, now that
they were walking on it, instead of being mounted high on a pile of
wood.

“I don’t know what Mother will say if we come back without Artie,”
worried Margy. “I must say, Ward, I think you ought to have been
watching him.”

“Oh, Margy, Ward isn’t to blame,” protested Polly. “Artie always takes
care of himself. I think a branch of a tree has swept him off. He’s
so thin, and if he happened to be thinking about something else, he’d
forget to hold fast, as Mr. Meade told us to do.”

Fred looked back. A turn in the road had already hidden the sleigh from
sight.

“I don’t believe he is hurt a bit,” said Jess stoutly. “Artie doesn’t
get hurt easily. Remember the time he fell off the bluff?”

“He’s always falling off some place,” declared Fred, gloomily. “I never
saw such a boy for mooning around when he ought to be paying attention.”

Artie was rather given to meditation at the wrong time, none of them
could deny that. In school he often chose a recitation period in which
to think, and as he seldom thought about the lesson which was being
recited, he had often been marked “zero” for questions to which he
really knew the answers.

“Well, we just have to find him,” said Polly. “That’s all there is to
that. A boy can’t disappear off the face of the earth.”

But by the time they had tramped along for the length of another turn,
they began to think that almost anything could happen to a boy. There
was no sign of Artie anywhere, and no trace that might suggest what had
become of him.

“Listen!” said Fred suddenly, holding up his hand.

A twig cracked under Ward’s foot and Fred frowned.

“Do be still, can’t you?” he asked quickly.

Jess sneezed at this point. Perhaps you’ve noticed that when one is
trying to have perfect silence, a flood of little noises seems to be
let free.

“Excuse me,” said Jess, politely. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” cried the exasperated Fred. “Can’t you listen a
minute? I thought I heard something.”

They listened intently.

“Hallo! Hal-lo!” came a call. “Come--back. Come--back!”

“That’s Mr. Meade,” said Fred. “Come on, we have to go back.”

“But we haven’t found Artie,” protested Polly, ready to cry.

“Got to go back and see what he says,” said Fred, firmly. “Come on.
Perhaps he has found Artie.”

Polly didn’t see how this could possibly be, but she followed the rest
as they turned. Fred tried to run a little, but they had walked fast,
and Ward, especially, had no extra breath to expend, even in a dog-trot.

“How could he find Artie, when he fell off back here somewhere?” asked
Jess of Polly, slipping along the glassy depressions left by sleigh
runners.

“He couldn’t,” Margy answered before Polly could. “I never heard of
such a silly idea in my life!” she added.

“All right--silly idea, is it?” said Fred. “Then who’s that?”

He pointed up the road, and Polly gasped while Ward’s mouth opened and
stayed that way from sheer surprise.

Coming toward them, waving his hands and evidently most pleased to see
them, was the missing Artie!

“Artie Marley! where were you?” cried Polly, while he was still two
yards away.

“Did you think I was lost?” beamed Artie, in reply.

“We didn’t think anything about it,” said Fred, grimly. “You weren’t on
that load, so we knew you’d fallen off. But where did you tumble?”

“I didn’t,” said Artie, walking back with them--they had rounded the
second turn by now and could see Mr. Meade waiting with the team. “I
didn’t fall off,” declared Artie, earnestly.

“Next, I suppose, you’ll say you were sitting next to me all the time,”
said Ward, suspiciously.

“No, I was down in that hole where the lunch basket is,” explained
Artie. “My feet got cold and I climbed down there and--and I went to
sleep, I guess.”

And that was all the mystery of his disappearance. He had crawled into
the hole left in the center of the wood pile, made comfortable by heavy
horse blankets, and had promptly gone to sleep. When the sleigh stopped
he had wakened and had amazed the waiting Mr. Meade by crawling out
behind him and asking where the “other children” were.

The rest of the way home Mr. Meade insisted on turning every few miles
and solemnly counting the boys and girls to make sure there were six of
them. And when he set them down at the island bridge, before he would
let them thank him for the happy day, he carefully counted them and
“added them to make six,” as he said. He didn’t intend to spill any
more of them out or have another one go to sleep and be counted missing.

The next day the Riddle Club campers went home, to be ready for school
on Monday morning. Ready for something else that was important, too.

“Our first meeting in the new clubroom,” said Polly, happily. “Monday
afternoon, as soon as school is out! Won’t it be fun!”




CHAPTER XII

THE RIDDLE CLUB MEETS


Although Polly had been so eager when she spoke of the meeting, she was
the last one to come to the clubroom after school the next afternoon.

She looked flushed and excited, and, without knowing why, the others
felt a little thrill of excitement, too.

Polly called the meeting to order and asked for unfinished business.
There was none.

“New business?” she asked.

Fred rose, the bank prominently displayed in his hand.

“The treasurer,” he announced, rattling the “treasure” cheerfully,
“would like to remind you that the dues are due.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” grumbled Ward. “It’s too soon after
Thanksgiving. No one has any money this time of year.”

Fred gave him an exasperated glance.

“I only wish,” he said coldly, “that you’d let me know the time of year
you want to pay your dues. In summer you say you need the money for
ice-cream and in winter you need it for--for--icicles, I suppose!”

Ward giggled and Margy sighed.

“Now they’ll argue over that for half an hour,” she whispered to Polly.

But Fred was in no mood for argument. He felt that he had a duty to
perform and he intended to perform it, whether or not his friends
enjoyed the performance.

“If you think I enjoy prying you loose from ten cents, Ward Larue,”
said Fred, “or you either, Artie Marley, you’re mistaken. But as long
as we have a club and a treasurer and I’m the treasurer, you’re going
to pay your dues and pay ’em at the right time.”

“I guess you can’t collect the money if I haven’t got it,” retorted
Ward.

“Then you’ll lose your standing,” said Fred, making a wild guess at the
“by-laws.” The Riddle Club had never bothered much with by-laws.

But Polly thought it time to interfere.

“I think you boys are too silly for words,” she pronounced. “Of
course Fred has to collect the dues--that’s his work. But you know,
Fred, that if you didn’t pitch into Ward, he’d hand you the ten cents
without coaxing. Why you want to argue and get cross is more than I can
understand.”

Ward scowled and Fred laughed good-naturedly.

“There’s the bank,” he said. “You can put your money in it or leave it
alone. But let me tell you, no club lasts very long without dues.”

“We haven’t spent a cent yet,” grumbled Ward, but he slipped his dime
into the bank in something like haste.

The other dimes tinkled merrily after, and the sound was music in
Fred’s ears. Whatever he chose to do, he did with all his might, and
the matter of club dues was a serious matter with him.

“What are we going to spend the money for?” asked Artie, to whom, like
Ward, the bank seemed to hold a fortune.

“We’re not going to spend it for anything,” Polly informed him, “till
we need something very much.”

“We could buy Christmas presents with it,” suggested Artie, wistfully.

“Artie Marley, I’m surprised!” said Polly. “That money doesn’t belong
to us any more. It is club money, and has to be spent for the good of
the club. Don’t you understand?”

“Well, I’m glad,” remarked Artie, “that the dues aren’t more than ten
cents.”

Fred was ready with a retort, but Polly forestalled him.

“Is there any other business before the club?” she asked quickly.

Apparently there was not.

“Let’s begin and ask riddles, then,” said Margy.

“I have something to tell, first,” announced Polly. “Wait a minute.”

From her blouse pocket she took six tiny boxes, each wrapped in white
paper and fastened with an elastic band.

“What in the world----” began Margy, but Jess said:

“Sh!”

“There’s one apiece,” said Polly, her voice trembling a little with
eagerness. “Your names are written on the boxes. Here, Margy.”

She handed Margy one of the boxes and, in rapid succession, Jess, Fred,
Ward and Artie received theirs. One was left for Polly.

“Do we open them?” asked Jess, and at Polly’s nod six pairs of hands
went to work.

“Gee!” said Artie simply, when he had opened his box.

The contents were the same. In each box, on a bed of pink cotton, lay
a shining pin. Dark blue enamel with a tiny “question mark” inlaid
in gold. Margy turned hers over. On the back “Margy Williamson” was
engraved.

[Illustration: “YOU ARE GOING TO PAY YOUR DUES.”]

“And our names on the back!” said Jess, in a tone of awe, turning her
pin over.

“Did Mr. Kirby send them?” asked Fred.

“He gave them to Mother to bring back with her,” explained Polly.
“Aren’t they lovely? I never saw such a darling pin!”

“And there isn’t another like it, anywhere!” murmured Margy. “We can
wear them to school to-morrow.”

“Don’t we have to thank Mr. Kirby, or something?” asked Artie,
seriously, and though they laughed at him, they knew what he meant.

“I can write a letter,” said Polly, “and we’ll all sign it.”

And a day or two later a “round robin” letter went to Rye, signed by
each member of the Riddle Club, a letter that left no doubt in Mr.
Kirby’s mind as to the pleasure his pins had given the lucky boys and
girls who received them.

“Now,” said Polly, when the pins were fastened in a conspicuous place
on each blouse or coat, “we can have our riddles.”

“I’ve got a riddle for Fred,” announced Ward: “How much money does the
moon represent?”

“Huh, that’s easy,” retorted Fred, confidently. “Quarters, of course.”

“That isn’t how much,” said Ward.

“Well, give me time to think and I’ll tell you,” answered Fred. “The
moon has four quarters--and four quarters--four quarters make a dollar.
Ah-ha, Mr. Larue, the moon represents a dollar.”

Ward was divided between admiration for Fred’s mathematical abilities
and chagrin that he had solved the riddle. The former won.

“You did get it,” he said generously. “You certainly are good at
guessing riddles, Fred.”

Fred was determined to show that he could be generous, too.

“I took two guesses,” he said, “and that really isn’t fair. I think
only one guess should be allowed.”

“I think so, too,” decided Polly. “If each one takes two or three
guesses, we use up the afternoon arguing.”

Artie’s easy giggle hinted that he rather enjoyed the argument, but
Margy and Jess were loudly in favor of the single guess.

“Your turn now, Margy,” said Polly.

“Why is your nose in the middle of your face, Ward?” asked Margy, with
startling suddenness.

Ward had been day-dreaming, and the question caught him unprepared. For
the moment he forgot that they were solving riddles.

“Where else would my nose be?” he demanded.

“That’s a riddle,” Margy explained, laughing. “Why is your nose in the
center of your face?”

Polly choked and turned it into a cough.

Ward felt of his nose thoughtfully.

“It’s in the middle of your face,” said Margy, hastily. “Why?”

“You don’t have to keep telling me,” Ward announced, with dignity. “I
heard you. My nose is in the middle of my face because--because a nose
knows where it ought to be.”

“Not bad,” said Fred.

“I told you the answer myself, and Polly nearly gave it away by
laughing,” said Margy. “The reason your nose is in the middle of your
face, Ward, is because it is the scenter.”

“The center of what?” asked the suspicious Ward.

“The center is the middle--that’s one kind,” said Margy, patiently.
“And then it’s the scenter--your nose is--because you use it to smell
with.”

Ward considered this in silence for a few moments.

“Well, maybe,” he admitted reluctantly.

“There’s no maybe about it,” said Margy. “Are you going to pay a
forfeit?”

“I don’t mind,” said Ward.

“Then I’d like three of the stuffed dates you have in your pocket,”
announced Margy, calmly.

“Your nose is a good scenter,” Fred told her. “How did you know Ward
had stuffed dates with him?”

“Because I saw him eating one,” said the calm Margy.

Ward had the grace to blush a little, and, jerking the box from a
pocket already stuffed to the bursting point, he silently passed it to
Margy. She opened it, took out three dates and gave it back to him.

“One apiece,” she said, handing a date to Polly, another to Jess, and
popping the third into her own mouth.

There were three dates left, by good luck, and Ward distributed these
to Artie and Fred and peace reigned again.

“Your turn, Artie,” said Polly, who wanted to laugh, but decided that
Margy didn’t.

“Mine’s about a nose, too,” said Artie. “Jess, what have noses but
smell not?”

“Teapots,” said Jess, with a beaming smile.

Artie looked disappointed.

“Bet you can’t guess this, Polly,” said Fred: “What is that which we
often return but never borrow?”

“Why, Fred Williamson, that’s my own pet riddle,” protested Polly. “I
was saving it up to ask you.”

“What don’t you borrow?” asked Jess, curiously.

“Thanks,” said Polly.

“What for? I didn’t do anything,” replied Jess, bewildered.

“That’s the answer to the riddle,” said Polly, merrily.

“I want to ask Margy a riddle,” Jess said. “What word will, if you take
away the first letter, make you sick?”

“You always pick out riddles with arithmetic in them,” Margy
complained. “And I can’t spell long words, either.”

“This isn’t a long word,” Jess encouraged her. “It’s a short one.”

“Wait a minute,” said Polly, rising. “Some one is knocking on the door.”

“Is it mince pie?” asked Margy, in a desperate effort to give the
answer before she should be interrupted. “Is it mince pie, Jess?”

“It certainly is not!” said Jess, and at that moment Polly flung the
door open and visitors appeared on the threshold.




CHAPTER XIII

FRED WILLIAMSON, BANKER


Mrs. Marley, Mrs. Larue and Mrs. Williamson stood in the doorway. It
was Mrs. Marley who asked:

“May we come in?”

Fred and Artie brought chairs and Ward scrambled over on the window
seat, leaving his place vacant.

“We thought the meeting would be over,” said Mrs. Marley. “And we
wanted to see how you looked in your new quarters. But don’t let us
interrupt. I don’t believe you’ve adjourned.”

“We have only a couple more riddles to ask,” said Polly. “That won’t
take long.”

“The meeting would have been over,” Margy explained, “only it took Fred
so long to argue about the dues.”

Mrs. Marley laughed and glanced at the other two mothers.

“My sympathy is with Fred,” Mrs. Larue declared. “I’ve been treasurer,
Fred, and I know what it is to have to send bills out three times for
one collection. If I had to go and ask verbally for the money--well, I
don’t believe there would be much money collected in our organization.”

“Oh, we always pay our dues,” said Ward, easily.

“Yes, you pay ’em--after I’ve made myself hoarse asking you,” Fred
exploded.

“Dear me, I think we’d better go on with the meeting,” said Polly,
wishing that Margy had never mentioned the subject of dues.

“All right--I’m ready,” announced Jess. “I asked Margy a riddle: ‘What
word will, if you take away the first letter, make you sick?’ But Margy
used up her first guess--she thought it was mince pie.”

“I didn’t really think it was mince pie,” explained Margy, carefully.
“I just said that because I was in a hurry.”

“Then do you want another guess?” asked Polly. “She may have another
one, Jess, the knocking at the door _did_ hurry her.”

Jess was willing, so Margy tried again.

“If I could spell, I wouldn’t mind,” said Margy, after thinking deeply
for a moment. “Is the word pill?”

Most of the Riddle Club members thought Margy had guessed it. Polly
knew the answer, but the boys were sure Margy had the right word. They
were surprised to see Jess shake her head.

“But if you’re ill you’re sick,” Margy argued. “Why isn’t that right,
Jess?”

“Because,” said Jess, “the word is music. Take away the first letter,
and you have U-sick. Don’t you see?”

“Oh, well, I call that a foolish riddle,” sighed poor Margy. “But I’ll
pay a forfeit. What shall it be, Jess?”

“You don’t have to pay much of a forfeit,” Jess assured her. “You
almost had the riddle, so I’ll give you an easy one to pay--nothing to
redeem. The red beads, please.”

Margy and Polly laughed. The string of red beads Margy was wearing
belonged to Jess, and she was merely taking her own property as a
forfeit.

“Now I’ll ask Artie,” Polly said, when the beads had changed hands.
“Then we can adjourn the meeting.”

“Artie,” she said quickly, “on what side of the pitcher is the handle?”

Artie sat in perfect silence for what seemed a long time. No one moved,
so fearful were they of disturbing his train of thought. It must have
been three minutes--and a long three minutes it was--before he spoke.

“The outside,” said Artie, sweetly.

He looked around, and his irrepressible grin broke out. In a minute
Ward was on top of him, and they were rolling joyously about on the
window seat.

“You knew it all the time!” Ward accused his chum. “You sat there like
a chump, just pretending.”

Artie did not deny the charge. His twinkling blue eyes spoke for him
and he was distinctly pleased with his joke that had kept a roomful of
people silent for three minutes or so.

“Sit up and behave,” President Polly commanded sternly. “Is there any
other riddle to be asked? No? Some one make the motion to adjourn.”

Fred made the motion, Jess seconded it, and the meeting was over.

Mrs. Williamson looked smilingly at Polly.

“Perhaps I should have spoken of this before your meeting was over,”
she said. “But to tell you the truth, I’ve only just now remembered it.
Mr. Williamson would like to offer another riddle with a prize for the
answer.”

The Riddle Club had had these prize riddles before. It was always fun
to try to get the answer, and the prize was always worth while.

“If you’ll write it down, Polly,” suggested Mrs. Williamson, “I’ll
give it to you now. The answers are to be read at your next regular
meeting and the prize will be five dollars.”

Mrs. Marley whispered to her.

“Oh, yes, I forgot to say that the prize is to go to the Riddle Club
bank--not to an individual,” said Mrs. Williamson.

Fred rattled the bank and its contents in delight.

“Gee,” he said, in heart-felt delight, “that’s great!”

To be sure, the prizes the various children had won before this had
always gone into the Riddle Club bank, but this was the first time the
prize had been offered directly for the bank.

“I don’t see what good that money is going to do us,” said Ward now.
“Fred will never let us spend a cent.”

“If we’d spent it every time you wanted to, there wouldn’t be a cent
left in there to-day,” declared Fred, with truth on his side.

“Don’t bicker,” Mrs. Marley warned them. “Better take down the riddle,
Polly. And whatever you do, don’t argue over the five dollars before it
is won; none of you may be able to guess Mr. Williamson’s puzzle.”

Polly took her pencil and paper and Mrs. Williamson pulled a little
book from her knitting bag.

“This is the riddle, Polly,” she said. “Stop me, if I read too fast.”

Then slowly and carefully, she read aloud, while Polly wrote it down:

“Why do pianos bear the noblest characters?”

“Go on,” said Polly. “I have that.”

“That’s the entire riddle,” Mrs. Williamson answered. “There is no
more.”

The members of the Riddle Club stared. The other prize riddles had been
complicated ones, some rhymed, all contained more words. This sounded
so simple that it must be a mistake.

“But that’s such an easy riddle!” said Ward, unguardedly. “Most any one
can guess that.”

“Go ahead, Ward,” Mrs. Williamson encouraged him. “Guess it and win the
five dollars for the club.”

“Pianos bear the noblest characters,” recited Ward, with confidence,
“because--because--because--well, of course, I’d have to think about
it,” he ended lamely. “But I don’t believe it’s hard.”

Mrs. Williamson laughed.

“I don’t know the answer myself,” she told them, “but I do know Mr.
Williamson. And something tells me he hasn’t chosen a very easy riddle
for you to guess. However, you may succeed in surprising him.”

Then Mrs. Larue said she had something to tell.

“I’ve been admiring your lovely clubroom ever since I came in,” she
said pleasantly, “and I can’t see that you need a single thing more
than you have. But before I came away this afternoon, Mr. Larue gave me
a silver dollar to spend as his contribution for the club. He thought
I would put another dollar with it and buy something nice for your
clubroom.”

“And I have two silver dollars I was commissioned to spend in the same
way,” added Mrs. Williamson.

Mrs. Marley said she had the same amount in her purse.

“Of course, we wouldn’t dream of buying without first coming to see
your clubroom,” she told the children; “and now we’ve seen it, the
problem is worse than ever. You really have as much furniture as would
be comfortable, and your decorations mean far more than any you could
buy.”

“Don’t you think it would be a good plan,” asked Mrs. Larue, gently,
“to put the six dollars in the bank, along with the club dues? Then,
any time you wished to spend it, it would be waiting for you.”

The Riddle Club accepted this plan with enthusiasm. They were even able
to understand something of Fred’s pride in the bank as the six shining
round silver dollars slipped into the slip at the side and rang merrily
against the other coins.

“We’re really getting wealthy,” said Margy, soberly.

Fred was so proud of the bank and the money in it that he was reluctant
to leave it long enough to go downstairs at Mrs. Marley’s invitation,
where hot chocolate and little sweet cakes were awaiting them as Mrs.
Marley’s treat.

“Don’t lock the door, Ward,” Fred said, as they went downstairs. “I’ll
come back and get the bank.”

Fred kept the bank in his own room, and usually he buried it under a
pile of magazines in his clothes closet.

Margy’s seat in the dining-room was near the window, and, happening to
glance out, she saw something that made her forget even the cake with
the walnut in the center, which she had coveted when they first sat
down.

“It’s snowing!” she cried. “Look--real snow!”

It really was snowing. River Bend had not had the snowstorm which
covered Lake Bassing with a white blanket over Thanksgiving Day, and
their schoolmates had listened enviously when they heard of the fun the
Riddle Club had had in camp. The snow now falling was the first of the
winter for the little town.

“Well, I suppose winter has really set in,” sighed Mrs. Marley. “You
children will be glad to see the snow, but I don’t care for it as much
as I did when I was your age.”

“I hope it will snow all night,” declared Fred. “We haven’t had any
coasting in an age.”

But the prospect of coasting to-morrow did not interfere with his
enjoyment of a second cup of the chocolate and another cake when Mrs.
Marley insisted that he have more.

After the cakes had disappeared, Fred went back to get his bank, and
then, as it was too dark--so the mothers said--to go out and play in
the snow, which by now covered the pavements and lawns with a thin,
white covering, the Larues and the Williamsons went home.

Mr. Williamson was reading before the living-room fire, and Fred went
in to tell him about the club meeting and to thank him for the prize
riddle offer and the silver dollar he had sent the club fund.

“By the way, Fred,” Mr. Williamson said presently, “wouldn’t you rather
open an account in the bank in the name of the Riddle Club? That iron
bank of yours must be heavy to carry around, and besides you have too
much money in it now to allow yourself to be careless.”

“Oh, I like to take care of it, Daddy,” was Fred’s answer. “Nothing
will happen to it; I’m not careless.”

“Fred, I just found your bank on the hall table,” said his mother,
coming into the room. “That isn’t the place to leave it.”

Fred looked a little confused.

“I was on my way upstairs, Mother,” he said, with dignity. “I stopped
to speak to Daddy.”




CHAPTER XIV

ON POND’S HILL


Fred took his bank upstairs and hid it in the usual place. That night
he dreamed he was president of a bank and the members of the Riddle
Club came to him to pay their dues faster than he could take the
money in. There seemed to be a great many more members than six, and
presently Fred discovered the reason--the Conundrum Club members had
joined!

The shock of this discovery woke him up. It was morning, but so gray
and dull that Fred was ready to turn over and go to sleep. Then he
remembered that it had begun to snow the night before and he hopped out
of bed and pattered to the window. It was still snowing and everything
in sight was well covered.

Of course there was no sleep for Fred after that, and not much for
the rest of the Williamson family. Usually Fred waited till his
father called him before he started to dress, but this morning he was
downstairs and prancing about on the porch when his father came to look
for him.

“Here, here, can’t you wait till after breakfast?” asked Mr.
Williamson. “Mother is going to bake hot cakes, and the boy who appears
with his hair combed and his necktie straight is going to have the
first one.”

Fred dashed back to his room and hastily brushed his hair. He and
Margy felt a deep interest in hot cakes, but it must be confessed they
were also “crazy” about the snow. They could hardly wait to eat their
breakfast, bundle themselves into coats and hats and woolly scarfs, and
plunge into that beautiful whiteness.

“Hello!” called Artie, from his porch, as he saw the Williamsons about
to start for school. “Wait a minute!”

The Marley front steps had not been brushed off, and Artie had no idea
of the depth of the snow. He took one step and sank into a feathery,
fluffy bed up to his neck.

“Gee, I missed that next step,” he said, with perfect good humor,
rising and brushing himself off. “Here comes Polly.”

Polly and the Larues joined the others, and, running and laughing, they
began the walk to school. The flying flakes stung their eyes and melted
on their faces, and it was fun to make snowballs and hurl them at the
fences and trees they passed and, yes, at each other.

“We’ll go coasting this afternoon, sure,” said Fred, as they reached
the school-yard gate.

Home they raced at the close of the afternoon session to get out the
sleds hidden in attic and cellar since the winter before.

The boys had each a sled, and Polly and Jess had their own, but Margy
preferred to claim a share in Fred’s long racer. She could never be
induced to go down the hill alone, and most of the time she coasted
with Polly.

“Everybody’s here,” said Ward, cheerfully, when they reached Pond’s
Hill, a beautiful slope on the other side of town.

It was still snowing fitfully, but the flakes were larger, an
indication that the storm was beginning to let up. Artie and Ward
wished it would snow for a week, but the older folk thought that a day
and a night should satisfy any one.

“There’s Carrie Pepper,” whispered Polly to Margy.

“And Mattie Helms,” added Jess.

“And Joe Anderson,” said Artie. “He has a new sled.”

Fred heard and turned to look. Sure enough, Joe had a new sled and it
was a beauty, long and low and with the flexible steering gear of the
best make of sled. Harry Worden, a post-graduate student in the high
school, was examining Joe’s possession in evident admiration.

“Some sled!” was his verdict.

Then he saw Fred and waved to him. The Riddle Club members knew Harry
Worden very well. The spring before, when he was a high school senior,
he had served as referee at a riddle contest held between their club
and the Conundrum Club. They liked him very much.

“Hello, Fred,” called Harry. “Come on over here and look at this.”

Fred went over to the other side of the road, glad of a chance to see
the new sled more closely.

“It’s a peach!” he told Joe, heartily. “Present?”

“Got it for my birthday,” Joe answered. “This sled cost a lot, and it’s
better than any one else’s. I’ll bet I can beat any one on the hill
now.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” drawled Harry Worden, lazily. “It
isn’t always the sled that wins a race. Something depends on the boy
who does the steering.”

“Bet you I can beat any one on the hill,” Joe boasted.

Harry only laughed and turned away and Fred went back to his friends.

“Take Margy down first, Fred,” Polly suggested. “She has more fun
before her feet get cold.”

Margy was apt to complain, midway in her outdoor sport, that her feet
were “freezing.”

Fred obligingly took his sister on behind him, but neither one could
be said to enjoy the ride down the hill. Margy shut her eyes tight and
Fred declared she pinched him.

“I didn’t!” said the indignant Margy. “I had to hang on to something,
didn’t I? Anyway, Fred Williamson, you go too fast.”

Polly said Margy should coast with her next, and amicable relations
were restored, as Fred shot down the hill alone, deftly curving in and
out to avoid the sleds that were flying down at the same time.

“I wish I could steer as well as Fred can,” sighed Polly, taking her
place on her own sled with Margy back of her. “It’s because he isn’t
afraid to take a chance. He will go around a sled or almost into the
ditch. But I’m always thinking of a smash-up.”

Ward and Artie were enjoying themselves in their own way, which was a
peculiar one, to say the least. Ward liked to lie flat on his sled with
Artie perched on top of him, and if one or the other rolled off in the
course of the descent, why, that was nothing at all! Snow, argued Ward
and Artie, was soft and comfortable, and one could always get out of
the way of an approaching sled by tumbling over and over till safe from
the danger of being run down.

Jess, too, had a method, and she followed it faithfully. Hers was a
sober enjoyment, for she went down the hill on her sled, turned around
and trudged back, to do the same thing again. Left alone, Jess would
coast contentedly a whole morning or afternoon, without mishap or
apparent excitement.

Polly and Fred liked to try experiments. They tried Polly’s sled with
Fred steering, and Fred’s sled with Polly guiding it. They went down
backward once and landed in the ditch. They tried to see how many
children they could pile on the two sleds, and they raced each other
with enthusiasm.

It was when they were returning from one of these races that Harry
Worden hailed them.

“Hey, Fred, want some fun?” he shouted.

Fred did, and he and Polly ran over to where Harry stood.

“Joe Anderson wants a race,” said Harry. “He thinks your sled is
probably the fastest on the hill, next to his. Want to try a race?”

“Sure,” answered Fred, quickly. “I’m willing.”

The news of the proposed race spread in a moment, and a crowd of boys
and girls gathered around Fred and Joe.

“Go to it, Fred,” some cried. “You can win.”

“Joe has the best sled,” others insisted. “No one can win against that
flier. It’s a peach.”

“Oh, I don’t know--Fred can get a lot of speed out of his old boat,”
said one of the boys.

Albert Holmes sniffed.

“Old boat, is right,” he said. “It’s about fifty years old.”

Fred grinned good-naturedly. His sled wasn’t new, but it wasn’t falling
apart yet, he assured them.

“I’m going down to the foot of the hill to watch the finish,” announced
Harry Worden. “Billy Pierce will give you the word to start.”

Jess and Artie and Ward decided to stay at the top of the hill, but
Polly tagged along after Harry, and Margy went with her. As soon as
they reached the foot of the hill, Harry waved his arm as a signal to
Billy Pierce to give the word to the racers.

“There they go!” cried Polly, as the two black specks at the top of the
hill suddenly shot down.

The snow had stopped half an hour before, and the hill was well packed
from the sleds and the feet of the coasters. It was cold, but even
Margy forgot that in the excitement of the moment.

The sleds seemed to be evenly matched half of the distance, then one
pulled slightly ahead.

“It’s Fred!” said Polly, in a half-whisper. “I know him by his cap.”

Fred’s sled, if it was Fred’s sled, kept the lead. The other did not
gain.

“Fred shot around that well in the road, I guess, and Joe must have
gone in and out--that takes time,” said Harry. “But you’re likely to
land in the ditch, going around.”

The watchers could see now that it was Fred who was ahead. Margy
thought she felt a flake of snow and looked up at the sky, while Harry
allowed his gaze to wander past the racing sleds to the top of the
hill. It was but a moment, but Polly was the only one to see what
happened in that moment.

“He turned him!” she cried. “I saw him do it! That Joe Anderson would
do anything to win! Don’t let him, Harry. Please, don’t let him!”

Harry Worden looked at the sleds, now near enough to be plainly
distinguished. Joe Anderson was in the lead, grinning triumphantly, and
Fred was just swinging his sled back on the course.

“Told you I could do it!” said Joe, as his sled swept past Polly and
Margy and Harry. “Can’t beat this sled!”

“You cheated!” Polly accused him, almost beside herself with anger. “I
saw you! You put out your hand and shoved Fred over to the left. That
isn’t fair, and don’t you dare----”

Fred tumbled off his sled and came up to them. He looked angry, but
when he saw Polly he tried to grin.

“I won!” said Joe Anderson, boastfully. “You did pretty well, Fred. But
of course your steering gear is out of date.”

“You cheated!” said Polly again.

Harry Worden looked troubled.

“Of course, I wasn’t looking,” he said slowly, “and I didn’t see what
happened. But Polly seems to think----”

Fred turned to Polly and blazed at her, to her utmost astonishment, for
he had never spoken to her like that in his life.

“You keep still!” he cried angrily. “I lost the race, and that’s all
there is to it.”

“No, that isn’t all there is to it,” Harry Worden corrected him. “You
race again, and this time I intend to know what is going on.”




CHAPTER XV

DETECTIVE MARGY


“I promised my mother I’d go home at half-past four,” said Joe,
uneasily.

“You can stay another ten or fifteen minutes,” Harry informed him. “You
go back and tell Billy Pierce I say this race is to be done over. Tell
him there’s no decision.”

“I’ll tell him you wouldn’t give a decision,” said Joe, hotly. “I won,
and you’re afraid to say so, just because Polly Marley----”

“I haven’t much doubt about your cheating, Joe,” said Harry, as coolly
as he usually spoke. “But as I didn’t see what happened with my own
eyes, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. You’re lucky, if you’d
only see it the right way.”

Joe turned sullenly away and began to plod up the hill, dragging his
sled after him. At the top of the hill Billy Pierce held the eager
coasters back, for he could see that some sort of argument was taking
place below.

“Just a minute, Fred,” said Harry, as Fred turned to go back. “Are you
willing to race again?”

“Sure,” said Fred, looking everywhere but at Harry or Polly.

“Were you knocked off the road?” asked Harry, a little hesitantly.

“I lost the race, and that’s all there is to it,” said Fred, doggedly.

“All right, go on,” Harry dismissed him.

“Joe put out his hand and gave him a big push,” said Polly, watching
Fred as he trudged up the hill. “If I was Fred I’d tell him what a
cheat he is. I never could stand that Joe Anderson.”

“I didn’t see him do anything,” declared Margy, mildly.

“You never do see anything,” retorted Polly, for, gentle as she was,
any unfairness always roused her, and once “woke up,” as Jess called
it, she was not easily soothed.

“I’m afraid we were asleep at the switch, Margy,” said Harry Worden
ruefully. “This time I mean to glue my eyes on the road and keep them
there.”

“But Fred must know he cheated,” argued Polly.

“Well, you see, Fred’s idea of a good loser is one who doesn’t grunt,”
Harry tried to explain. “He’d rather say nothing than be thought
complaining because he failed to win.”

Polly was not convinced, but she said nothing more. And she and Harry
and Margy stared at the white road till their eyes ached, waiting for
the two black specks to come toward them.

It was a long hill, and when the boys reached the top there were
explanations to be made to Billy Pierce and the curious boys and girls
who wanted to know what had happened. Seated at last on their sleds,
Joe made a start before the signal was given and had to be brought
back. The next time he sulked and did not start at all, and it was Fred
who had to turn around.

At last, though, they got off, and those at the foot of the hill saw
the two dots swooping downward. There was one bad spot in the road--the
depression Harry had mentioned--and Fred grimly swung his sled around,
grazing the deep ditch and even trembling a fraction of a second on
the edge before he threw his weight to the right and shot back to the
center of the road.

Joe had decided to take the hole, changed his mind too late, and went
into it sideways as a result of his effort to swing to the left as
Fred had done. He almost upset his sled, but righted it in time and
was out of the hole a half yard behind the flying Fred. As the boys
had discovered, it was Fred’s quick judgment and willingness to “take
a chance” that gave him the advantage. He had strong wrists, too, and
could change his course as easily as Joe could change his mind.

That was Joe’s great drawback--this habit of changing his mind. It
interfered seriously with his steering, for if there is one place where
it is not wise to change your mind, it is on a steep hill. Having once
decided on his course, the wise coaster sticks to it. Joe’s indecision
was reflected in the wobbly movements of his sled, and this time he
came in a yard behind Fred.

“No doubt about that,” said Harry, with relief. “You win, Fred.”

“I won the other--only you wouldn’t play fair,” said Joe, hardily.

“It’s getting dark, but there’s still time for another race if you want
to call it a tie,” declared Harry, swiftly. “Is it a tie, Joe?”

“Oh, let Fred have it--I don’t care,” Joe mumbled.

“I’ll race again,” said Fred, after a moment’s silence.

“No, the others are coasting now,” decided Harry. “We can’t hold them
up any longer, for it’s getting dark. Fred wins, and if I were you,
Joe, I wouldn’t go around making any uncalled-for remarks.”

Joe took his sled and went back without a word. Harry Worden followed
him to make sure that a truthful report was spread around, and Polly
and Fred ploughed slowly up the road, at one side, pulling Margy on
Fred’s sled.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you, Polly,” said Fred, a little shyly. “I
guess I sounded pretty cranky.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” declared Polly, determined not to let him know
he had hurt her feelings. “I didn’t mind that, Fred. But I saw Joe
Anderson push you--I certainly did.”

“Well, you want to forget that and forget it for good,” said Fred,
stopping in the snow and speaking very earnestly. “I don’t care if he
tipped me off and rode over me. When I lose a race I’m not going to
parade any excuses.”

“I’ll never say a word about it, Fred, if that’s the way you feel,”
Polly promised. “But I do think boys are too queer for anything.”

“Of course they are,” observed Margy from her seat of state. “I’ve
always said they were funny, but you would never believe it.”

For once in their lives, the children in River Bend had enough snow.
After the coasters went home, more snow fell, and it continued to
snow at intervals all night. As a result a whole new world, without a
footprint from the day before left on it, was ready for inspection the
next morning.

“Tell you what let’s do,” remarked Artie, as they came home from school
at noon. “Build a snowman!”

“I don’t think that’s so much fun,” Margy maintained.

“Oh, I don’t mean just a snowman,” explained Artie. “Not one of those
little ones the kids build. I mean a great, big giant of a snowman with
a head higher than a house!”

“How would we build a snowman as high as that?” demanded Fred. “Get in
a tree and put his head on?”

“We could use a stepladder,” said Artie.

Though inclined at first to laugh at this scheme, the more they
discussed it, the better it sounded.

“They had an enormous snowman over in Stockton,” said Artie, naming
a neighboring town. “Daddy read about it. They built him in the main
square, and every one helped. He had electric lights for eyes and
clothes and everything.”

“I’ll bet we could build one just as good,” declared Ward. “We’ll make
ours the tallest snowman River Bend ever saw.”

“Let’s make him a big hat with R.C. on it,” suggested Polly. “Then
every one will know he belongs to the Riddle Club.”

This idea was pronounced “great,” and the Riddle Club could hardly wait
till school was out to begin their statue.

A snowball fight was in progress in the school yard when they went back
after lunch, and the battle continued furiously till the one o’clock
bell rang. Flushed and warm, the pupils marched up to their classrooms,
and on the stairs Polly made a distressing discovery.

Her precious Riddle Club pin was missing!

These pins had been envied or admired by every pupil in the school, and
there was probably nothing Polly owned which possessed more value in
her eyes.

She thought the loss warranted writing a note to Margy, though the
teacher severely discouraged this practice.

“Lost your pin!” Margy’s lips echoed silently, when she had read the
note. “How perfectly awful! Where?”

Polly shook her head to show she did not know. But she was afraid she
had lost it in the midst of the snowball battle, and the prospects of
recovering it were exceedingly dim.

Now Margy had sharp eyes when she chose to use them, and she could be
counted on to be interested in what went on outside her books. While
poor Polly was trying to forget her troubles in the writing lesson,
Margy’s dark eyes were roving over the room in search of amusement.

Carrie Pepper sat near her, over two aisles, and she, too, was
apparently little interested in the lesson. When the teacher’s back was
turned, Carrie swiftly passed something to Mattie Helms, who sat behind
her.

“I wonder what she has,” thought Margy, idly.

Mattie’s head bent over something as she examined it, then she dropped
her pencil. It rolled under the desks and Mattie stooped to get it.
As she straightened up, she dropped the something lightly on Joe
Anderson’s writing book.

Margy could not see, from where she sat, what the something was, but,
like a flash, she guessed.

“Polly’s pin!” She almost said the words aloud. “Polly’s pin! Carrie
was right behind her coming up the stairs this noon. I’ll bet she found
the pin, and she’s so mean, she won’t give it back.”

Margy hastily took her pen and attacked the writing lesson. She wanted
to think. Apparently absorbed in the work before her, she was planning
to find out whether Carrie had really found the missing pin.

“It’s something so small it doesn’t show when she has it in her hand,”
Margy reasoned. “And she is showing it to Mattie and Joe, who aren’t
exactly crazy about Polly or our club. I do believe it is Polly’s pin,
and I intend to find out.”

Margy’s writing lesson may have left something to be desired that day,
but by three o’clock she had a clever plan worked out to solve the
mystery.

“Wait a minute,” she said to the impatient five, who waited for her
in the hall. “Yes, I know you want to get to work on the snowman, but
Polly lost her club pin this noon, and I think I’ve found it.”

“Lost her pin?” echoed Jess. “Where?”

“You haven’t found it?” gasped Polly.

“Well, of course I’m not sure,” said Margy, modestly, “but I think I
have. I noticed Carrie walked right behind you this noon, as you were
going upstairs. I didn’t think anything of that till I saw her passing
something around this afternoon. I couldn’t see what it was, but she
showed it to Mattie Helms and to Joe Anderson.”

“It might be anything,” said Polly, gloomily.

“If it is the pin, what are you going to do about it?” Fred asked his
sister. “You can’t go up and accuse her of taking Polly’s pin.”

“I could, but I don’t intend to,” said Margy. “I might ask her and she
would say she ‘found’ it. But I know a better way than that. I’m going
back to our room now and you go out in the yard and wait for me. It
will take me a little while.”

“Look here, what are you up to?” said Fred, a little quickly.

“I’m going through Carrie’s desk,” returned Margy, placidly.

“Oh--suppose some one finds you?” said Jess, with a shiver of fear.

“They won’t. That’s why you have to wait,” said Margy, who had thought
out her plan carefully. “You see, I figure that if Carrie found the pin
she won’t dare wear it and she won’t take it home to show her mother,
because she would make her give it back. She can’t do a thing with it,
but keep it to plague Polly and show the Conundrum Club. So I think
she’ll leave it in her desk, and I mean to take it out.”




CHAPTER XVI

RIDDLE CHAP


Of course it wasn’t the right thing to do--to go through Carrie’s
desk. Margy herself had the feeling that she was in the wrong, but she
certainly didn’t mean to let Carrie keep Polly’s pin if she had it.
Neither did Margy like the idea of telling the teacher and asking her
to have Carrie search her desk.

“I’m the one to get that pin back, and I’m going to do it,” thought
Margy, as she marched upstairs, leaving five sober-faced children to
wait for her.

Luckily, there was no one in the classroom when Margy entered it. She
supposed a burglar must feel as she did when she thrust her right
hand into Carrie’s desk. Two pencils, a box of candy cough drops, a
handkerchief with a gingham border--Margy’s fingers touched the back of
the desk. There, far up in one corner, she felt something that pricked
her.

“Ouch!” she said, and drew out the pin.

Waiting only to return the things she had taken out, Margy flew down
the stairs and presented the pin to an astonished and delighted Polly.

“And don’t lose it again,” she lectured her. “I might not be able to
find it so easily a second time.”

“I’ll be careful,” promised Polly.

“Did Carrie really have it in her desk?” asked Jess, round-eyed.

“She certainly did!” replied Margy, as they started to walk home. “I
was almost sure she’d keep it there.”

“Say, what will she say when she can’t find it to-morrow morning?” said
Artie. “And if she sees Polly wearing it, what will she think?”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” broke in Fred. “The point is, she can’t
say anything. She won’t dare go around saying some one went through her
desk, because she’d sound nice saying that some one took a Riddle Club
pin she found on the stairs, wouldn’t she?”

“Perhaps she wasn’t sure it _was_ my pin,” suggested Polly.

But the others laughed at this idea. The new pins Mr. Kirby had sent
them were quite unlike any other pins in the town of River Bend and
certainly Carrie knew them as well as the pins of her own Conundrum
Club. Besides, wasn’t Polly’s name on the back?

“Let’s take our pins off before we begin to build the snowman,” said
Polly, when they came in sight of their homes. “We might easily lose
one in the snow.”

This was hailed as a wise precaution, and they ran in to put their
individual pins in safe places.

Fred stopped short in surprise when he saw his room. The rug had been
taken up, the bed was rolled in one corner, and his closet door was
wide open. A row of his shoes stood on a newspaper spread on the window
sill and in the center of his rocking chair sat the precious bank. A
strange woman was down on her hands and knees, mopping the floor with
hot water.

“I guess you’re Fred,” she said, smilingly. “Your ma set me to cleaning
this room this afternoon. I’ll put things back just the way you had
them.”

Fred put his pin on the cushion on his bureau--which was covered with a
white towel to protect it from dust--and then glanced at his bank. He
didn’t like to leave it there.

“I’ll take it over to the clubroom and leave it there, I guess,” he
said to himself. “It won’t hurt to leave it there all night.”

It had been decided to build the gigantic snowman between the Marley
and the Williamson house, because they had the advantage of two large
yards filled with snow. Fred found that Ward and Artie had already
started to roll a ball for the body of the snowman.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Fred, joining them: “What shall we make the
letters R.C. of? If we do them in snow they won’t show up very well.”

“We can get red flannel or something,” said the resourceful Polly.

“I think red and white would be pretty, because Christmas is coming.”

“Maybe we can give him a little Christmas tree to hold,” said Jess.
“That would look fine, wouldn’t it? A great, big snowman, holding a
Christmas tree.”

“There--this is a good place to stand him,” declared Fred. “Don’t roll
the ball any larger. We can begin to build now.”

They had a fair sized ball of snow rolled, and Fred had chosen a spot
near the walk to have him stand.

“Get all the snow you can and plaster it against this ball,” directed
Fred. “We’ll have a fat snowman while we’re about it.”

River Bend was a happy town in which to live, if you happened to be
fond of playing in the snow. There was no limit to the quantities you
could collect, if you were willing to work and the storm had been a
heavy one. Jess and Ward got out the wheel-barrow and trundled loads
of the white stuff from their own lawn. As Ward said, it was a pity to
“let it waste.”

“Wait a minute,” said Fred, suddenly. “We’re forgetting his legs. If we
build him sitting down, he won’t be nearly tall enough. We must start
two columns, and use them for legs, and then put the ball of snow on
top of them.”

So they set to work and soon had two large, squatty columns of snow
that looked like the piling in Ward’s father’s wharf.

“The snow packs fine, doesn’t it?” said Polly to Margy.

The girls were as busy as the boys, hauling snow and packing it down
firmly, and never a word did Margy say about cold feet. She was far too
interested to pay attention to her feet.

“Now we’ll have to lift that ball somehow,” said Fred, when the legs
were pronounced finished. “You and Polly get on one side, Margy, and
Ward and Artie get over here. Jess and I’ll take this side.”

The snow was not very heavy to lift, but it was hard to handle, and so
cold that they felt it through their gloves. With some difficulty,
they finally had it in place, and the statue already looked like a
snowman, Artie declared, stepping back to view their handiwork.

“Well, we’ve come to the place where we’ll have to have a stepladder,”
said Fred.

“Why don’t we use the loft ladder?” asked Jess. “That’s light and easy
to carry.”

“We can’t lean it against the snowman--he’d topple over,” replied Fred.
“We have a stepladder, but I noticed it up in our hall. The cleaning
woman was probably using it.”

“I’ll get ours,” offered Polly. “I know where it is--on the back porch.
I can bring it.”

Fred and Artie went with her and brought the ladder back. Then it had
to be set up with care, for every one knows that a stepladder takes
delight in falling over just as you reach the top step. Fred opened it
and fastened the bars and ran lightly up to the top to test it.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Say, this is fun. We can pretend we’re
brick-layers and bring up hods filled with snow.”

“We haven’t any hods,” Ward reminded him.

“That flat board will do,” said Fred. “Here, give it to me; I’ll show
you.”

He took a flat light board that happened to be on the ground and
scooped two handfuls of snow on it. Then he mounted the ladder,
carrying the board and the snow, and deposited them on the square
little shelf that was under the top step.

“Here you are, Riddle Chap,” he addressed the snowman’s body. “We are
going to make you the best looking chap for miles around.”

“Riddle Chap!” cried Artie. “That’s fine, Fred. We’ll call him that.
His initials stand for Riddle Chap, don’t they?”

“Well, of course, he has to have a name,” Fred chuckled. “If we’re
going to make him as large as life, he’ll need a name so we can
introduce him to our friends.”

Each of the boys and girls took turns going up and down the ladder
and each added some new beauty to the snowman. He had buttons on his
waistcoat, and arms that crooked at the elbows--that was Polly’s idea.
She had taken two pieces of old rubber hose and bent them to look like
arms. The snow had been carefully packed around and over these.

Ward and Artie made the neck, and they all shaped the head with its
peaked cap. Margy insisted that the initials were not to go on till the
head was in place, and this proved a wise plan, for they dropped the
head three times and had to do it over before Fred and Artie finally
succeeded in putting it on the neck.

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” cried Polly, watching from the ground. “You have
it turned all the way around! The poor snowman is looking backward.”

Slowly and carefully, Fred turned the head till it faced in the right
direction. Then Margy handed up the letters cut from strips of red
flannel, and Fred put them on the visor of the cap. The snowman had
coal black eyes, a mouth like a red pepper, and ears that bore a
resemblance to orange peel. He was very tall indeed--far taller than
any of those who had made him--and when his makers looked at him they
were agreed that he was quite the largest statue they had ever tried to
build.

“If it’s cold to-night, we can throw water over it and let it freeze,”
said Fred, standing off a little to admire his handiwork.

“There’s Carrie,” said Jess, in a low tone. “See her coming out? I
guess she is going to the post-office.”

“What are you doing?” Carrie called, from across the street. “What’s
that funny thing?”

Before they could answer her, she had crossed over and was staring at
the snowman.

“Well, of all the queer things to do!” said Carrie. “Regular child
play, I call it, building a snowman.”

“That’s some snowman you have there!” called a hearty voice, and Harry
Worden crossed from the other side of the street. “I’ll take a picture
of him to-morrow for you, when the sun is out. I don’t think I ever saw
as large a one as that.”

“Is it as large as the one they had in Stockton last year?” asked
Artie, hopefully.

“Much taller,” replied Harry. “I’d like to get a snapshot of this one.
Don’t let anything happen to him, and I’ll be around in the afternoon
as soon as school is out.”

Carrie went on to the post-office. It was nearly dark, and in a few
minutes the five o’clock whistle would sound.

“Gee, it will be nice to have a picture of our snowman,” said Artie.
“We can frame it and have it in our clubroom.”

Fred looked a little startled.

“Speaking of the clubroom reminds me of something,” he said hurriedly.
“Mind if I go over to your house, Artie?”

“Sure, come on,” replied Artie, hospitably. “Want that book I said I’d
lend you?”

“I want to go up to the clubroom a minute,” explained Fred.

But when he went upstairs with Artie, the clubroom door was locked.
Ward had the key as usual.

“I started to bring the bank over here this afternoon,” said Fred, a
little worried frown between his eyes. “I thought I did it. But if I
didn’t, what _did_ I do with the bank?”

“Maybe you left it in your own room,” said Artie, comfortably.

“I’m sure I didn’t,” Fred answered. “But it won’t hurt to go and look.
I might have put it down again without thinking.”

“Lots of times I think I’ve done a thing and haven’t,” observed Artie,
trotting beside Fred, as he went back to the Williamson house. “And
sometimes I think I didn’t do a thing and it turns out that I did.”

But neither of these “thinks” proved of much help to Fred. The bank was
not in his room, now in perfect, shining order with his things in their
accustomed places. It was not on the hall table where he had once left
it. In fact, the sad fact dawned on Fred, slowly and unhappily, that he
had lost the bank and its precious contents.




CHAPTER XVII

LOST TREASURES


“Let’s go out and look in the snow,” suggested Artie. “You must have
dropped it between your house and ours.”

As the two boys opened the front door a whirl of snow flew in their
faces. In the brief time they had been within doors a new snowstorm had
gained headway.

“Who’s that?” called Fred, suddenly.

“Who’s that yourself?” Carrie Pepper’s voice retorted. “Your old
snowman is enough to scare any one going by--they’ll think it is a
giant.”

Carrie hurried across the street with the mail, and Fred tried not to
think she might have been hunting around the snowman.

“She _was_ stooped over,” he said to himself. “But she may have dropped
a letter. Anyway, I don’t suppose she would take the bank if she found
it.”

Then he remembered Polly’s pin.

“She might think it would plague me,” he thought. And he had to admit
that if that was Carrie’s plan--always provided she had found the
bank--she could not think of a better plan for teasing him.

“Well, it isn’t here, that’s all,” declared Artie, brushing the snow
off his gloves after an unsuccessful grubbing about in the snow. “I
don’t see what you could have done with it, Fred.”

“Oh, Fred!” Jess’s voice came to them out of the storm. “Is that you? I
came back to look for my glove. I don’t suppose you’ve seen it?”

“Your glove?” repeated Fred. “Is that lost?”

“Yes, it is, and it’s a brand new one,” returned Jess, ready to cry.
“Mother got them for me when she went to the city. They’re brushed
wool, and they’re gauntlets, and they cost six dollars!”

“Gee, that’s tough luck,” said Artie, sympathetically. “But I don’t
believe you lost it around here, Jess. I’ve been all around the snowman
on my hands and knees, and I would have found it if it had been
anywhere around.”

“Did you lose something, too?” asked Jess, surprised.

Fred was in no mood to hide his troubles.

“I’ve lost the bank,” he said abruptly. “And all the club money in it.
I had it before we started to build the snowman, and now I can’t find
it.”

“Isn’t it in your house?” asked Jess.

Fred explained where he and Artie had looked.

“Well, I never heard of such a thing!” said Jess. “My good glove and
your bank gone! Somebody must have picked them up--that’s all.”

“Carrie Pepper was out here when we started to look,” Artie announced.

“Then she found it!” cried Jess. “I’m going right over now to her house
and ask her to give me back my glove. You come along, Fred, and make
her give you the bank. That’s the same as stealing, to take things like
that.”

“It isn’t stealing to take one glove,” protested Artie.

“’Tis, too,” insisted Jess. “What good is one glove? No good at all!
Carrie Pepper knows those gloves are new. She has to give it back to
me, that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, you take my advice and go mighty slow about accusing any one of
taking your glove,” said Fred, earnestly. “I’d no more go to her and
ask her for the bank than I’d fly. I might as well come right out and
say she stole it.”

“She took Polly’s pin, didn’t she?” Jess demanded.

“That’s different. Lots of people might take a pin, and they wouldn’t
take money. Besides, how do we know Carrie didn’t intend to give the
pin back to Polly? Margy didn’t give her a chance to return it.”

“Jess! Jessie! Come in right away!” called Mrs. Larue.

Jess had to go in to supper without her glove, and Artie went home,
too. Fred looked around in the snow for a few minutes longer, but the
storm was increasing and he finally gave up. He could hardly touch his
supper, and afterward he told his father what had happened.

“I’m sorry I didn’t put the money in the bank, as you said,” poor Fred
concluded his story. “But I never thought I could lose a thing like a
bank.”

“Well, Fred, it seems as though it must turn up,” Mr. Williamson said,
trying to speak cheerfully. “I don’t see, myself, how a bank and its
money contents could disappear, unless some one has stolen it. And we
won’t think that.”

“Try to remember where you had it last, Fred,” his mother suggested.

“Why, I _thought_ I took it over to the Marleys’ to leave in the
clubroom,” said Fred. “I can’t remember letting it out of my hand. But
the room was locked and Ward hadn’t been near it.”

“Perhaps you left it somewhere else in the Marleys’,” said Mrs.
Williamson, “and you were in such a hurry to get out and build the
snowman, you did not notice. If Artie or Polly find it, they’ll be over
to tell you.”

But neither Polly nor Artie found the bank. Fred went over there
before going to bed--and had to plough through several inches of fresh
snow--but none of the Marley family had seen the bank.

In the morning the window sills were banked high with snow and there
were no foot prints around the snowman, who stood tall and strong, a
handsome guard for the street.

“We’ll give him a tree to hold before Harry Worden comes to take his
picture,” said Ward, eagerly.

But Fred felt little interest in the snowman. He could think of nothing
but the missing bank.

“I’ll resign as treasurer,” he said to Polly, on their way to school.

The sun was out and the snow had stopped. A white world, brilliant and
beautiful, was spread before their eyes.

“I’ll resign,” said Fred. “I’m not fit to be treasurer and take care of
other people’s money. I’m too careless. And I’ll save every cent of my
allowance and pay all the money back to the club.”

“Don’t be silly, Fred,” Polly told him loyally. “We don’t want you to
resign. No one will be as good a treasurer as you are.”

“I’m no good at all,” said Fred, bitterly.

“Yes, you are, too!” flashed Polly. “You’re fine. It isn’t exactly your
fault that the bank is lost. Every one is likely to lose things. You
don’t have to have to make the money up, either. If one of us had lost
it, you wouldn’t make him pay the money back. Besides, Mother says she
is sure the bank will be found.”

“Did she say that?” asked Fred, hopefully. “Daddy thought so, too. I
wish it would be found, but I feel it is gone for good. And the worst
of it is, I can’t remember putting it down anywhere.”

“What do you suppose Carrie Pepper will say when she sees me wearing my
pin?” said Polly, hoping to take Fred’s mind off his troubles.

Instead, she only succeeded in starting his thoughts on another tack.
Had Carrie Pepper found anything in the snow the night before? Or was
she merely feeling around for a letter or parcel she might have dropped?

“I hate these ugly old mittens,” Jess was complaining to Margy.
“They’re not a bit pretty, and they’re not nearly as warm as my lovely
gloves. Mother says maybe she’ll get me a new pair for my birthday in
February, but I’ll have to wear these horrid old things till then,
because I’m so careless.”

Margy, not having lost any treasure, felt free to keep an eye on
Carrie and observe the effect of Polly’s pin on her. Polly had the pin
in its usual place--above the pocket of her middy blouse, and Carrie
apparently did not notice it until Polly went to the board during the
arithmetic lesson.

“There--she’s seen it,” said Margy to herself, as Carrie stared.

Then, heedless of the lesson, Carrie began to rummage through her desk.
She pulled out the box of cough drops, the pencils, the handkerchief,
and an apple she had brought for recess. Then, keeping her eye on the
board as though she were following the example, her hands began to
explore the desk. She was feeling for the pin.

Perhaps the intensity of Margy’s gaze made her glance over her
shoulder. Margy’s eyes were dancing. A sudden, deep flush spread over
Carrie’s face.

“Now she knows,” said Margy to herself. “And the next time she finds
anything that doesn’t belong to her, I hope she’ll give it up.”

Harry Worden came that afternoon and took a picture of “Riddle Chap,”
but Fred could think only of his bank and Jess was looking for her
glove all the time the snapshots were being taken. It was lucky that
something happened to distract their attention and, in the case of
Fred, it was doubly welcome. He felt so bad to think he had lost the
money belonging to the club that his mother was afraid he would worry
himself sick.

“You try to get the prize riddle, Fred,” Mrs. Williamson told him.
“That will give the treasury a good start again.”

Fred said he would try, but that noon he came home from school, excited
and eager.

“The principal was telling us this morning in assembly, Mother,” said
Fred, “that there is a family in River Bend who is just about starving
to death. The town is going to take care of them, but there are six
children in the family and they want to give them a real Christmas. The
day before school closes they’re going to take up a collection.”

“And I suppose you want me to tell you and Margy how to earn some
money,” said Mrs. Williamson, smiling.

“No, I have a new scheme,” said Fred. “We’re going to have a session of
the Riddle Club before Christmas. I haven’t had a chance to talk this
over with Polly yet, but I thought it would be fine if we had an open
meeting and asked the fathers and mothers to come. The way you did in
camp this summer, you know.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with the Christmas collection,” said
Margy, who was listening.

“It has a lot to do with it,” Fred retorted. “I thought that, instead
of paying forfeits when Mother and the others missed a riddle, they
could pay money, and we could give the money to the poor children. And
if we missed riddles, we’d pay, too.”

“Why, Fred, I like that plan very much,” said his mother. “I’m sure
Polly will like it, too. Tell her as soon as you can, so you’ll all
have time to study up hard riddles.”

“You won’t mind not being able to guess them, will you, Mother?”
laughed Margy. “You like to help people along.”

When Mr. Williamson heard of this plan, he was even more enthusiastic
than his wife. He said he had a plan of his own, but that he would keep
it a secret till the meeting.




CHAPTER XVIII

A PRACTICAL JOKE


Polly approved of Fred’s plan the moment she heard it; and the
Riddle Club members fell upon the riddle books--well-worn by this
time--old scrap books, and clippings and even went about among their
acquaintances, collecting difficult riddles.

“For we must make them as hard as we can,” said Polly, earnestly. “Then
no one will be able to guess them and we’ll have heaps of money to take
to school for the collection.”

But, of course, they couldn’t think of riddles every hour in the day,
no matter how interested they were in the coming meeting. There was, as
Artie observed, “a good deal of weather going on,” and it alternately
rained and snowed for three days. This added to the beauty of the
snowman, for he grew a little icicle beard, and he wore earrings, too,
formed of the melted and frozen snow.

“I think we ought to break those off,” said Ward, much scandalized. “I
never saw a man wear earrings.”

“Don’t touch that snowman,” ordered Fred. “If he wants to wear
earrings, let him! Every one says he is the biggest snow statue we ever
had in River Bend, and we’re not going to spoil him picking on him.”

The pictures Harry Worden had taken turned out beautifully, and he
had had an enlargement made for the Riddle Club clubroom. Mrs. Marley
cleverly framed it in an old frame that fitted exactly, and the snowman
hung on the wall of the pretty clubroom and was much admired.

Though Fred had searched diligently for his bank and never ceased to
mourn it, he could not find it, nor even a trace of where it might have
been. Jess sympathized with him deeply--as indeed they all did, for
Fred had been so very proud of the money saved.

“I’d give anything, if I could find that bank,” said Fred, twenty times
a day. “I don’t see what I could have done with it. And why can’t I
remember where I put it down or where I had it last?”

“I don’t know,” Jess would sigh. “I don’t see, myself, how you could
lose a whole bank. But then, I lost my lovely glove, and the one that’s
left isn’t a bit of good. And they cost six dollars--they were real
brushed wool. Oh, dear, it’s awful to lose things, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t care if I’d lost a glove,” said Fred. “I wouldn’t mind
losing anything of mine, even my new stickpin Aunt Katherine sent me.
Because that would be mine and it wouldn’t affect any one else. But
here I’ve gone and lost all the money that belongs to the Riddle Club!
I’m saving my allowance, but it will be a million years before I get
enough saved to make up for what I lost. What’s a glove, compared to a
bank?”

Along about this time of year school began to be what Jess called
“exciting.” The classes stayed after school several afternoons to make
decorations for the auditorium, where a Christmas party was always
held. This year Polly had learned how to make pretty red flowers, and
Miss Elliott, her teacher, suggested that if long wreaths were braided
of crêpe paper strands and these flowers placed at intervals, the
effect would be very pretty.

“It’s a good deal of work,” Miss Elliott said; “but the festoons will
stay up till we come back to school after the holidays. There’ll be a
good many visitors at the school, just before Christmas, and we’d like
the auditorium to look its best. If you’ll make the flowers, Polly,
we’ll all help braid.”

Polly was glad to make the flowers, and she stayed after school for an
hour or two every afternoon, cutting and pasting.

“I’m so sick of braiding this silly old paper,” Carrie Pepper
complained to Mattie Helms. “I think it’s mean we never have any of
the fun. All Polly Marley has to do is to sit there and make flowers.
Any one can make flowers, and it’s interesting. Not like braiding this
stuff.”

“I don’t think her flowers are much,” commented Mattie. “Do you?”

“No, nothing extra,” said Carrie. “There goes Fred Williamson. He looks
at me so funny, every time he sees me.”

Carrie did not know it, but Fred was almost sure she had taken his
bank. He could not see her without wondering if she really would do a
thing like that. He did not believe, for an instant, that she would
take the bank and use the money, for that would be stealing; but he
thought she might keep it, as she had Polly’s pin, to torment him. He
tried to imagine what she would say if he should walk up to her some
day and ask her to hand back the bank. But he never did ask her, for
his common sense told him he had nothing to uphold his suspicions and
that it would be rather foolish to accuse Carrie of taking anything
when he had no proof.

Polly worked on the flowers one afternoon till she had two dozen ready,
all but the long green stems.

“I think I’ll take these home,” she said to Miss Elliott. “I can wrap
the wire there and finish them easily.”

“That’s a good plan,” Miss Elliott replied. “Here’s a pasteboard box to
carry them in. But don’t try to do them all to-night, Polly--you ought
to play outdoors an hour before you have supper. It’s a shame to miss
all this good coasting.”

Polly put her flowers and the things she would need to finish them into
the box her teacher gave her. She had just reached the steps when some
one hailed her.

“Hey, Polly!” her brother shouted. “Come on over here! We’re firing at
targets!”

Polly looked. The boys had tacked up an empty tin can on one of the
trees in the school yard and they were firing snowballs into it--that
is, if a snowball went into it, it counted a bull’s-eye.

“You watch me, Polly!” cried Artie, as Polly put her box down on the
step and came running across the yard. “Bet you I hit it this time!”

He packed a firm, damp snowball, took careful aim, and fired.

“Did it!” he shrieked. “Told you so!”

Fred laughed and handed a ready-made ball to Polly.

“You try,” he said.

Polly stepped back a few feet, shut her eyes, and threw the ball. It
struck the tree a few feet above the tin can.

“Don’t shut your eyes,” instructed Fred. “You want to aim. Here, try
again,” and he gave her a second ball.

This time Polly hit the tree below the can. But her third trial was
more successful, and the snowball went neatly into the can, scoring
what Artie enthusiastically informed her was “a peach of a bull’s-eye.”

“I can’t stay another minute,” said Polly, when they asked her to try
again. “Where’s Jess and Margy? I have to go on home and finish some
more flowers.”

“Jess had to go to the dentist and Margy went to take a music lesson,”
Fred recited.

“Oh, of course--yes, I remember,” said Polly. “Margy is coming over
to-night to practice our duet.”

Polly and Margy were to play a duet at the Christmas party in school.

Picking up the box she had left on the steps, Polly hurried off home,
while the boys continued to hurl snowballs at the tomato can with
varying success but unwaning enthusiasm.

“I wouldn’t work on those flowers now, Polly,” said Mrs. Marley, when
she saw her daughter. “You’ve been indoors all day, and you’ll feel
much better if you take your sled and have a coast or two before it’s
dark. I’ll help you with the flowers after supper and we’ll get them
done in less than an hour.”

So Polly went out again and met Margy, now through with her lesson, and
they had four trips down the hill and back with their sleds before the
five o’clock whistle sounded.

When Polly came in, she went upstairs to brush her hair. She had left
the box of flowers on the bed in her room, and she was surprised to
find a dark stain spreading over the counterpane.

“What in the world is that?” she said, in astonishment.

She lifted the box hastily. It was heavy with water, and it was water
that had seeped through the pasteboard and made the stain.

Polly tore off the lid--melted snow!

“Some one put it there!” she cried. “But where are my flowers? I had
them in the box--I never took them out--I don’t see----”

She called her mother, and together they puzzled over it as they
changed the bed clothes, for even the blankets were soaked through
from the water.

“Some one has played a trick on you,” said Mrs. Marley, spreading clean
sheets. “The paper flowers were light, so they could substitute snow
without making a difference in weight. Where did you leave the box?”

“I didn’t leave it----” Polly began.

Then she remembered.

“I put it down on the school steps while I tried to throw a snowball
into the tomato can,” she said. “But there was no one in the school
yard, except the boys, Mother.”

“Nevertheless, that is when the trick was done,” declared Mrs. Marley.
“Some one took out the flowers and the paper and wires and filled the
box with snow. It’s a mean thing to do, I’ll admit; but I don’t suppose
they thought you’d put the box on the bed. They must have counted on
your opening the box as soon as you reached home.”

“But I promised Miss Elliott to bring her the flowers in the morning,”
said poor Polly, looking very much as though she might cry. “She wants
them to put in the new rope that’s already braided.”

“Don’t cry, Polly,” said her mother. “You’ll have the flowers. I have
always said that the best way to pay a practical joker back, is not
to let him know his joke has been a success. We’ll get Artie and Jess
and Ward and Fred and Margy to come and help, and, working together,
we can make and finish two dozen flowers this evening. Then, when you
take them to school, don’t say a word about the missing ones. Whoever
played the trick will be waiting to hear you complain, and if you act
as though nothing had happened they’ll be more surprised than you were
when you opened this box.”

When the others heard what had happened, they were eager to help.
Fortunately, Polly had the materials for making the flowers on hand,
and as soon as supper was over the six chums set busily to work. Polly
and her mother cut the flower patterns and helped start them, but the
others soon learned how to fold and paste, and they refused to stop and
rest until the full two dozen flowers were finished and neatly packed
in another box.

“And here’s a little ice-cream,” said Mr. Marley, coming in as the
scissors were being put away. “I thought the least I could do for such
an industrious circle was to get them a little refreshment, since I
have no talent for making paper flowers.”

The next morning Carrie Pepper and Mattie Helms watched to see what
Polly would say when Miss Elliott came. To their intense surprise,
Polly marched up to the desk and put down a pasteboard box.

“I finished the flowers, Miss Elliott,” she said clearly.

Carrie looked at Mattie. They both felt a little foolish. And though
neither would admit it, they admired Polly, who, instead of complaining
and “fussing,” had evidently managed in some mysterious way to get her
flowers finished on time.

“Thank goodness, that’s done,” said Polly, with a sigh of relief, as
she went back to her seat. “Now we can have the Riddle Club meeting
to-night and enjoy ourselves.”




CHAPTER XIX

THE SPECIAL MEETING


That night it began to snow again, the fine, steady snow that always
promises a real storm. When Mr. Marley came home to supper, his
overcoat was covered with the white flakes.

“It’s lucky that every one lives near,” said Mrs. Marley, lighting
another electric lamp to make the dining-room more cheerful. “No one
would want to go very far on a night like this.”

“Oh, they would, Mother, if they were going to the Riddle Club,” Artie
assured her. “I’d go anywhere to a Riddle Club meeting.”

Mrs. Marley laughed and said she was thankful she didn’t have to tramp
through a snowstorm to reach the meeting.

“Isn’t it lovely to have this room?” said Polly to Artie, when, a
little later, they went upstairs to the warm, well-lighted, pretty
clubroom. Artie had borrowed the key from Ward, because they wanted to
make sure the heat was turned on before the guests arrived.

“Think how it would be out in the barn on a night like this,” remarked
Artie, breathing on the window panes so that he could see out. “Gee,
Polly, it’s snowing yet.”

A stamping and scuffling on the porch announced that the members and
guests of the Riddle Club had arrived. The Williamsons, of course,
had come from no further away than the next house and the Larues from
across the street, but they were covered with the snow. They took
off their coats and shook them on the porch, and even then, when Mr.
Williamson took off his hat inside the house, a powdery shower of white
fell to the rug.

Polly glanced at her mother as though to remind her of something.

“You’ll want to have a business meeting before we come upstairs,” said
Mrs. Marley, pleasantly. “So run on up, children, and when you are
ready for us, let Artie call.”

Polly led the way up to the clubroom and called the meeting to order
promptly.

“This is to be a short business meeting,” she said gravely. “We have no
unfinished business to consider and so there is only one thing to do.”

“What’s that?” asked the unsuspecting Fred.

“Collect the dues,” said Polly, holding out a new copper bank to the
club treasurer.

Margy declared afterward that she thought Fred was going to cry. His
face got very red, and for a moment he did not say anything.

“You want me to collect the dues?” he asked, when he did speak. “Dues
from you, after I lost all the club money?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Jess, from her corner. “Everybody knows you
didn’t lose the bank purposely. We’ve all brought our money, and it’s
up to you to collect it.”

And Jess walked over and put a shining new dime in the slit in the
bank. Artie followed her.

Never had Fred, in his experience as treasurer, found it so easy to
collect dues from the entire membership. Even Ward did not argue, but
insisted on paying his dime. And none of them would hear of Fred giving
the bank to any one else to take care of, or leaving it in the clubroom.

“You’re the treasurer, and you take care of it,” said Polly. “You suit
us, and if we don’t fuss about the money that’s lost I don’t see why
you should. Artie, go call the folks to come up.”

The grown-ups came in and sat down in the chairs provided for them.
Polly, who was now used to talking “standing up,” as she said, thought
it best to explain the purpose of the meeting again.

“This is a special kind of session of the Riddle Club,” she said
earnestly. “Instead of forfeits, the ones who fail to guess a riddle
must pay money, and the money collected is going to school, to be used
for a poor family. But don’t try flunking the riddles, because that
isn’t fair.”

“You’d rather have good sportsmanship than a tray full of money,
Polly?” asked Mr. Williamson, smiling.

Polly nodded.

“If we win the prize riddle to-night, we’re going to give that to the
collection, too,” she said.

“That reminds me of something I have to say,” Mr. Williamson declared.
“I said I had a secret for you, and this is it: I’ll pay ten cents to
the school collection for every riddle that is guessed correctly here
to-night and an extra five dollars if the prize riddle is solved, the
extra money to go in the club bank.”

Polly saw that Mr. Williamson had chosen that way of helping Fred make
up the money lost, and she thought it was a most generous way. She
didn’t say so, but she smiled at Mr. Williamson and he knew that she
understood what he was trying to do.

“I thought we’d open the answers to the prize riddle first,” said Polly.

Choosing from the six folded papers on the table before her, she opened
one and read it aloud.

“The riddle was, ‘Why do pianos bear the noblest characters?’ And this
answer says, ‘Because they’re always cheerful.’”

“They’re not,” said Margy, positively. “I guess I ought to know.”

“No piano is cheerful when you’re practicing your music lesson on it,”
agreed Mrs. Williamson, smiling.

“The second answer reads, ‘Because they keep in tune,’” read Polly.

“Not so bad,” said Mr. Williamson. “But it doesn’t happen to be the one
we’re after.”

Polly picked up a third paper.

“This one says, ‘Because pianos are expensive.’” She tried not to laugh
when she read this. She recognized the writing as Artie’s.

“Here’s another,” she said hurriedly. “‘Pianos bear the noblest
characters because they are grand, upright, and square.’ Why, that must
be right!” added Polly, in surprise.

“Correct!” said Mr. Williamson. “See if that last paper has solved it,
too. No? Well, then, will the prize winner please step forward and
receive the prize?”

To the utter astonishment of the roomful, Margy came forward.

“Margy Williamson, you never guessed a riddle, did you?” gasped her
mother.

If it had been Fred, no one would have wondered. But Margy! She who
always complained that every riddle was too hard, that she couldn’t
spell the words in them or do the arithmetic they demanded of her.
Margy!

“It isn’t very complimentary to be so upset, Margy,” said her daddy,
putting a little white box in her hand; “but I must say you are the
last member of the Riddle Club I thought would solve a prize riddle.”

Margy grinned and opened her box. In it were two beautiful five dollar
gold pieces.

“One goes in the bank,” she said, slipping it in as she spoke, “and
the other goes on the tray for the school collection,” and she put the
gold piece on the silver tray Mrs. Marley had loaned for this special
occasion.

“How did you ever guess it?” Ward asked respectfully.

It was a question that each one had wanted to ask.

“Well, you see,” Margy explained, “I can’t guess riddles unless I have
time to think about ’em. I thought and thought and _thought_ about this
one. Every time I sat down to practice, I thought some more. Then I
heard Miss Elliott talking to the music supervisor one day, and she
said something about our school piano being out of date.

“‘No school uses the old square pianos if they can get uprights,’ she
said.

“I looked ‘upright’ up in the dictionary,” Margy went on, “and I found
there was more than one meaning and one meant ‘honest and square’; so
I guessed both words could count. And Mattie Helms told me one day in
school that she was going to take music lessons as soon as her mother
bought a grand piano--and there I had another word to use. They all
fitted in, so I just used them.”

“Good for you, Margy!” cried Mr. Larue, clapping his hands. “You
deserve to win the prize.”

They all clapped Margy, and she settled down happily again on the
window seat, between Artie and Jess.

“Now we’ll ask the riddle,” said Polly. “Margy, you begin, because you
won.”

“Daddy Williamson,” said Margy, seriously, “What is that which by
losing an eye has nothing left but a nose?”

“A one-eyed man?” guessed Mr. Williamson.

“Forfeit!” cried Ward, so excited that he couldn’t keep still. “It’s
noise.”

“Well, let Margy tell her own answers to her own riddles, Ward,”
reproved Polly.

“How much is the forfeit to be?” asked Mr. Williamson.

“I don’t think you ought to pay any,” said Polly. “You gave us ten
dollars, and that’s enough.”

“Oh, I want to pay a forfeit,” Mr. Williamson insisted. “Like my
daughter, I don’t seem to be able to spell without thinking. Suppose we
pay ten cents for the riddles we miss?”

The others were willing, so Mr. Williamson put ten cents on the silver
tray.

“Mother,” said Ward, at a sign from Polly, “What is the difference
between a schoolmaster and an engineer?”

“One trains the mind, the other minds the train,” answered Mrs. Larue,
with a smile. “That was a pet riddle of mine years ago, Ward.”

“I guess you told it to me,” admitted Ward, “but I forgot.”

“Ten cents for the collection,” said Mr. Williamson, putting down a
dime on the tray.

It was Jess’s turn to ask her father.

“What is that which never asks questions, yet requires many answers?”
asked Jess, eagerly.

“I should say a-a-a- oh, Jess, I’ll pay ten cents gladly for the
answer,” said Mr. Larue, placing two nickels with the other change.

“It’s a doorbell,” said Jess.

“Artie,” nodded Polly. “Your turn.”

“What mechanic never turns to the left, Mother?” he asked hopefully.

“The bricklayer?” she suggested.

“Forfeit!” cried Artie. “It’s the wheelwright.”

Mrs. Marley paid her money and explained to Ward what a wheelwright
was, and then Fred was ready to tackle his mother.

“Bet you can’t guess this, Mother,” he said. “Of what trade were all
the presidents of the United States?”

“Why, Fred, cabinet makers, of course,” replied Mrs. Williamson.

“Here’s the ten cents for you, Mother,” said Mr. Williamson, gleefully.
“I’m glad one of us solved a riddle.”

“Polly’s last,” said Ward. “Go on, Polly, ask your dad.”

“Why is an egg lightly boiled like one boiled too much, Daddy?” asked
Polly, smiling.

“I know nothing about cooking,” said Mr. Marley, pretending to frown.
“Is it because you can’t eat it?”

“Forfeit, Daddy!” cried Artie. “He’s wrong, isn’t he, Polly?”

“The answer is, ‘Because it is hardly done,’” said Polly, holding out
her hand for the ten cents.

They had planned to ask each other riddles, but when Mrs. Marley
suggested they all go down to the kitchen and make molasses candy and
cool it in the snow, the members of the Riddle Club decided that they
had had enough riddles.

“We put our five dollars into the collection, so we are not being
selfish,” said Polly, soberly. “How much money have we for the poor
family, Fred?”

“Counting the five dollars, we have five dollars and sixty cents,” said
Fred.

“That’s fine!” said Polly and Jess together, and Mr. Larue added forty
cents more to make the fund six dollars.




CHAPTER XX

MERRY CHRISTMAS


The molasses candy was a great success and so was the school collection
the next day. When Polly told Miss Elliott how they had collected the
six dollars, the teacher thought it was such an interesting story that
she asked Polly to tell it before the assembly. Polly was too shy, but
Fred was persuaded, and when he had finished speaking, the principal
had a few words to say.

“I’d like the Riddle Club to know,” he said, “that we all admire their
energy and generosity. They could have asked their parents for the
money, but instead they held this novel meeting. And the girl who won
the prize for the riddle could have kept the money for something else,
but she chose to send it to girls who have nothing. To-day is the first
time I have heard in detail of the Riddle Club, but I shall always
remember it after this morning.”

Dear, dear, wasn’t the Riddle Club pleased and embarrassed and proud,
all at once!

“Carrie Pepper looked as though she could cheerfully bite you, Polly,”
said Jess, at recess. “I don’t believe she liked to hear us talked
about that way.”

“Oh, she’s all right,” said Polly. “If you don’t look out, Jess, you’ll
be like Fred. He can’t say one good thing about Carrie. I don’t believe
he even speaks to her now.”

School closed two days before Christmas, and the party, which the
entire school attended, was one long two hours of fun and laughter.
Margy and Polly played their duet and there were recitations. A huge
Christmas tree was trimmed entirely with things to eat. Popcorn and
peanuts and strings of cranberries and doughnuts tied on with red
ribbons, cookies strung together like necklaces, red apples, oranges
cut in fancy shapes, net bags of candy, bars of chocolate done up to
look like presents--that tree looked as any Christmas tree would look
trimmed for a party, but there wasn’t a single decoration on it that
couldn’t be eaten.

The children ate everything on it, too, before going home, and then it
was carried out in the school yard and planted in the snow to serve as
a dinner table for the birds. The older boys climbed it and fastened
bits of suet to the highest branches, and Christmas morning those who
passed the yard saw flocks of hungry birds enjoying a holiday feast.

“We must fix Riddle Chap up for Christmas,” suggested Polly, as they
walked home after the party.

Riddle Chap had had his tree to hold long ago, but as Polly pointed
out, there was nothing on it.

“He needs a cheerful necktie,” Fred declared. “I’ll get him that red
one with purple spots that Daddy never wears.”

“We’ll put suet in the tree for the birds,” said Jess. “They’ll like
that. And we can hang a wreath around his neck.”

“We’ll trim him all over!” cried Polly, joyously. “Give him a wreath
and wind ground pine around his body and stick a holly spray in his
hat.”

They were as good as their word, and Riddle Chap, on Christmas Eve, was
as gay as any snowman who ever had Christmas dreams. He wore a wreath
about his throat, a fearfully bright necktie under his chin, holly in
his hat, and his arms and legs were wound with ropes of ground pine.

Polly and Margy liked to consider themselves almost grown up--at
times--and Fred was sure he was much older than Ward and Artie. Jess,
who was a year older than Margy, liked to romp too well to desire
“grown-upness,” as she called it. But when Christmas Eve came, each
member of the Riddle Club discovered that hanging up one’s stocking was
half the fun of Christmas, and Polly and Margy and Fred were just as
eager as Artie and Jess and Ward.

“Come over early,” they told each other when they said good-night,
after the snowman was arrayed. “Come over early and see our things.”

Artie may have started for Ward’s house--at least, that is what he
always said he was doing, though his mother declared he must have
been dreaming. Anyway, long before daylight, the Marley household was
awakened by a tremendous crash.

Mr. and Mrs. Marley rushed out from their room, meeting Polly in the
hall.

“Where’s Artie?” she gasped.

“Here he is,” called Artie, sweetly. “I guess I kind of fell
downstairs. The globe fell off the lamp on the newel post.”

Artie wasn’t hurt--though it was a wonder, for the broken glass from
the globe was strewn all around him--and he did not seem to be sleepy
at all. Perhaps the fall had awakened him. However, his father said
that no one was to think of opening Christmas presents at half-past
three in the morning, and Artie had to go back to bed and wait till
daylight for further excitement.

Just as soon as it was light, Artie and Polly were downstairs to
examine their stockings. Whoever had filled them, knew exactly how the
job should be done and Ward and Jess, and Margy and Fred, had the same
report to make.

There were the red beads Polly wanted in the toe of hers; packed in
among the candy and nuts in his, Artie found the jackknife he had
long coveted; Ward, who had once said he never had enough to eat, was
delighted with a stocking stuffed from toe to top with nothing but food
of one sort or another; Jess found a new pair of gloves rolled up in
hers, to take the place of the missing one. Margy had beads, too, only
hers were blue; and Fred had a fountain pen with his initials on it in
gold.

After the stockings came breakfast, and then it was time to see the
larger presents. Later, Polly and Artie went to the Williamsons and
helped Fred and Margy try on their new skates, then the four went to
the Larues to help Jess and Ward admire the two new sleds, and then
they all went back to the Marley house where Polly and Artie displayed
a jumble of new skates, sweaters and muff and games and books that made
one wonder what these children would have left to wish for another
Christmas.

“We’ll all go to the post-office,” said Polly. “The mail is in now.”

And it was, a delightfully exciting mail which held cards and letters
and packages for every one in the three families, from cousins and
aunts and uncles who lived far away.

“Oh, my!” gasped Artie, when the packages were sorted out and he had
his in his arms. “Look! Here’s something from Mr. Kirby!”

Well, there was a package for each member of the Riddle Club from Mr.
Kirby. They knew he had sent them, for his name and address were on the
outside wrapper. Each box was exactly alike in shape and size. What
_could_ be in them?

“Let’s open them,” said Artie, sensibly.

There were a number of wrappers, and from the last one tumbled a small
white box and a card that read, “With best Christmas wishes to Artie
Marley, from his friends, Tony Kirby and Will Adams.”

Each card said the same thing, substituting the various names of the
Riddle Club members.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Polly, the moment she had opened her box. “How
perfectly lovely!”

The little box was lined with blue velvet, and on the blue velvet lay
a gold signet ring. There were two letters engraved on the face. They
were R.C. Polly lifted out the ring and turned it over. Inside it was
engraved with her name and the date.

“And they fit!” said Margy, in surprise, as six rings were slipped on
six fingers. “He must have asked our mothers what size we wear!”

And that was exactly what Mr. Kirby had done. He had written to find
out what ring sizes to order, and the three mothers had kept his secret
carefully.

“He gave us our lovely club pins, and now we have club rings,” said
Polly. “I never knew any one so nice!”

“Let’s hurry and write him a letter right away, and Mrs. Williamson can
take it to-morrow,” suggested Artie.

Mr. and Mrs. Williamson were supposed to spend New Year’s with the
Kirbys in Rye, because they had not gone at Thanksgiving time. But Mrs.
Williamson had discovered that she couldn’t go away from home for New
Year’s Day, and now they were to leave the next day and have a little
visit during holiday week. Fred and Margy were to stay with the Marleys
while their parents were away.

The next morning, when Mr. and Mrs. Williamson set off for Rye, they
carried a letter signed by all the Riddle Club members, thanking Mr.
Kirby and Mr. Adams for their gifts and telling them how much happiness
they had given.

“Gee, isn’t it cold,” said Fred, as the Williamson automobile
disappeared around the turn in Elm Road. “I’ll bet you it is thirty
degrees below zero.”

Mr. Larue overheard him and laughed.

“You wouldn’t be standing there so complacently, Fred, if it were as
cold as that,” he said. “This is just good skating weather.”

It was so cold and clear that Jess declared she saw “miles and miles”
when she looked across the river, now frozen over. The ground was
covered with snow, of course, and at every step this crunched under
foot. When a wagon went past the wheels screeched, a sure sign of a
cold day.

“Isn’t it great!” bubbled Ward. “We have new skates and there’ll be
skating as soon as they get the river swept off; there isn’t any
school, so we can have all the fun we want; and there’s good coasting,
too, and some of us have new sleds. And I haven’t eaten all my candy
up, either,” he added.

“You’re one satisfied person,” commented Fred, blinking, for the sun
on the snow was dazzling. “Let’s go down and watch them sweep off the
river. Maybe they won’t let us on yet.”

But “they” were willing for River Bend folk to go skating, for the
ice was firm and thick. Later it would be cut to fill ice-houses, but
as a rule the children could count on good skating through January. A
group of men were busily at work this morning, with brooms, brushes and
horse-drawn scrapers, taking the snow off the ice and getting it ready
for the skaters. The sun was helping, too, and the Riddle Club members
decided that by noon the river would be in fine condition.

“We’re going up to the pond, Mother,” said Polly, at the lunch table.
“No, we’ll not be cold. You never get cold skating.”

“Don’t be late for supper,” cautioned Mrs. Marley. “And be sure you are
dressed warmly. It will be much colder toward night.”

“It’s cold enough now,” grumbled Margy, who would have liked to go
skating in July, if that had been possible.




CHAPTER XXI

ANOTHER RACE


Although Margy refused to be enthusiastic about cold weather, nothing
would induce her to miss a skating party. She could skate well, as
indeed could nearly every child in River Bend. With a river at hand,
it would have been strange if they had failed to learn as soon as they
could buckle on their skates. The Riddle Club members could hardly
remember the time when they had not gone skating.

“Wouldn’t it have been a shame,” said Fred, striking off up the ice
with long, even swings, “if the first skating of the year had come
while we had to go to school?”

“Yes, it would,” agreed Ward. “I think they ought to cut out school in
the winter, anyway. I don’t mind it so much in March, because half the
time it rains and you can’t have much fun in the rain; but winter is
the best time of year to be outdoors.”

Ward looked as though he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was
puffing slightly--he couldn’t help getting out of breath when he
exercised--but his eyes were beaming and he showed his even, white
teeth in a delighted grin.

“I don’t think it’s as cold as it was,” said Jess to Polly.

“That’s because you’ve warmed up,” declared Polly wisely. “I’m never
cold when I’m skating.”

“Just the same, it is warmer,” insisted Jess.

“Sure it is,” Fred flung over his shoulder. “It’s turned warmer since
we came out.”

Though Polly had announced that they were going up to the pond, they
did not start right away. The river was fairly well covered with
skaters by this time, and presently a string of skaters appeared, seven
boys and seven girls, each wearing a white woolly sweater with a large
“C.C.” stitched across the front.

“Look at the Conundrum Club!” cried Polly. “They have sweaters just
alike. Do you suppose they’re Christmas presents?”

The sweaters were Christmas gifts. Carrie herself told Polly, when she
skated up a few minutes later and asked to see the Riddle Club rings.

“How did you know we had rings?” Polly asked, surprised.

“Oh, some girl told me,” said Carrie. “I suppose they’re plated. But
the monogram is kind of nice, only I think signet rings are rather old
fashioned, don’t you?”

Polly wanted to laugh, for Carrie was trying the ring on as she spoke.
Carrie seldom praised another’s possessions, but it was easy to see
that she admired the new ring.

“I say, Fred,” called Joe Anderson, skating up, “let’s have a race. Bet
you I can beat you to the bend and back.”

Margy pulled violently on Fred’s sweater.

“Don’t do it,” she whispered. “He cheats! Remember the time you
coasted?”

Fred did remember, but a challenge was a challenge.

“All right, I’ll race you,” he said shortly.

“Why don’t we all race?” asked Carrie, shrilly. “Let’s make it a
Conundrum Club against the Riddle Club race.”

“Go on--that will be fun!” cried some of the other boys and girls
skating about the circle. “And the winners have to race again.”

That was the way it was finally decided--that six of the Conundrum Club
members should race the members of the Riddle Club. Joe Anderson chose
the ones he wanted to represent the Conundrum Club--besides himself and
Carrie, there were Mattie Helms, Albert Holmes, Ben Asher and Stella
Dorman.

“We’ll line up and start when Edith counts three,” said Joe, who,
having planned the race, did not seem to think he was obliged, as a
matter of courtesy, to consult the wishes of any one else.

Edith Spencer was a member of the Conundrum Club. She was a girl who
easily became excited, and the first time she tried to count three she
stuttered so badly that no one could tell what she was trying to say.
The second time she did better and at the word “Three!” the skaters
dashed off, Joe Anderson in the lead.

“I wish I was bigger!” thought Artie, skating bravely. “I’d like to
win--but just the same if I can’t beat that Albert Holmes, I’d like to
know the reason!”

The bend in the river had been designated as the turning point, and Joe
Anderson reached it first, with Fred close behind him. Fred was saving
his speed for the spurt he wanted to make on the return way. Polly was
ahead of Carrie and Mattie had just passed Margy when Jess stumbled and
fell.

“Don’t stop!” she cried, as Ward and Artie came up with her. “Go on!
Hurry!”

But Ward and Artie pulled her to her feet, and then the three tried
desperately to regain the ground lost. It was too much of a handicap,
however, and Albert Holmes and Ben Asher both came in ahead of Artie,
who had set his heart on beating Albert.

It was almost a tie between Fred and Joe, and Polly was a half yard
ahead of Carrie, so another race was planned between these four.

Fred had a plan all his own which he hoped would work. He had carefully
refrained from fast skating in the first race, being contented to keep
up with Joe. He knew that the second race would be harder, because he
would not be as fresh. This time he was determined to skate at top
speed.

At the signal they started, Polly in the lead. A flash passed her; it
was Fred, head bent, eyes on his skates. Try as he would, Joe could not
pass him, and Fred held his lead to the bend and back to the starting
point, winning by a good yard.

“Well, anyway, Carrie beat Polly,” said Stella Dorman, as Carrie shot
in ahead of Polly, who had lost time in making the turn. “No one can
say the Riddle Club skaters are better than we are.”

Fred was satisfied to have it that way.

“Come on, we’re going somewhere,” he said, beckoning to his chums.
“Race you again some time, Joe.”

The Riddle Club waved good-bye and went on up the river. They skated
more slowly now, for they were just a little tired from the excitement
and the fast skating. Polly’s cheeks were crimson and Ward was panting.

“Let’s sit down a minute,” suggested Jess. “I want to see if I skinned
my knee when I fell down.”

They skated into the shore and sat down on the bank. Jess discovered
that her knee was not badly hurt, after all, and Ward was grateful for
the rest.

“Looks like more snow,” said Fred, pointing to the sky, now gray and
overcast.

“Why can’t you be cheerful?” scolded Margy. “We’ve had all the snow we
want for a long time. It’s going to be clear weather--the paper said
so,” and Margy looked triumphantly at her brother.

“You have to take the kind of weather you get,” said Artie, sagely. “It
doesn’t make any difference what you want.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s going to snow,” announced Polly, rising.
“Come on--if we’re going to Jackson’s Pond, we’d better get there. We
haven’t reached the fork, yet.”

[Illustration: FRED HELD HIS LEAD, WINNING BY A YARD.]

To reach the pond, it was necessary to skate to a point where the
river forked. Two miles up this arm, one came to Jackson’s Pond, a
place much used for picnics in summer and the scene of evening skating
parties in the winter. It had long been an ambition of Fred’s to skate
all the way to this pond, because he had always gone by automobile
before.

The children skated steadily and soon reached the fork where they
turned into the narrow “arm” that lay through a rather desolate
country. There were no houses to be seen, but here and there smoke
drifted from a chimney and indicated the presence of a farm.

“I wouldn’t like to live up here, would you?” said Artie.

“No, River Bend is much nicer,” agreed Jess.

“Still, we could skate to school if we lived here,” suggested Polly.
“That must be the schoolhouse over there.”

She pointed to a small building set in a fenced yard. There was a flag
pole, but no flag was flying.

“Closed for the holidays,” commented Fred. “There! Who said it wasn’t
going to snow?” he added triumphantly.

A stinging wet flake struck Margy’s upturned face.

“It’s just a flurry,” she said comfortably.

“Perhaps we’d better turn around and go back,” said Polly. “We’ll be
skating against the wind, anyway, and it will take us longer to get
home than it has to come.”

“Oh, come on, we want to be able to say we’ve skated as far as the
pond,” urged Fred. “You’re not afraid of a little snow, are you, Polly?”

“No, I’m not, but I don’t want to be caught in a big storm, miles away
from any house,” said Polly, sensibly.

“This won’t be a big storm,” declared Artie.

But the snow continued to come faster and the wind rose, growling.

“I wonder if it’s late?” said Margy, suddenly.

“No, it can’t be,” answered Fred. “We started right after lunch, and it
was only half-past twelve.”

A sudden gust of wind struck Margy sharply in the face.

“It’s so dark!” she gasped, swallowing a mouthful of snow.

And it was dark. The clouds were heavy and they seemed so near that
Jess was sure she could touch them. The wind had risen steadily, and
as the six children rounded a bend in the stream, it caught them full
force.

“I can’t breathe!” screamed Jess, in a sudden panic.

“Turn around!” shouted Fred.

They turned their backs to the storm and waited a moment.

“There’s no use trying to go back,” cried Fred to Polly, as another
gust of wind swooped upon them. “It’s blowing from all directions at
once. We’d better try to get in somewhere.”

“Is it a blizzard?” asked Jess.

“It’s a storm,” said Fred, trying to speak cheerfully. “Come on, we’ll
take off our skates and walk. There’s no use trying to skate in a wind
like this.”

They managed to get their skates off, and then climbed the low bank.

“We’ll follow the river,” Fred decided, “because if we get back in the
country we might get lost.”

Fred was a very comforting person to have around when things didn’t
go right, Polly thought, trudging after him. He could always think of
something to do, and his plans were usually good. Instead of being
undecided, or standing around in the teeth of the wind while he thought
of what they should do, he kept them moving, and moving was so much
better than standing still. You felt as though you were going toward
help, at least.

“Do you see anything over there, Ward?” Fred shouted, suddenly,
breaking in on Polly’s thoughts.

“Where?” cried Ward, peering through the whirling film of snow.

“There--across the river,” answered Fred, pointing.

Ward stared. Yes, the dim outlines of a building certainly could be
seen.

“It’s a house!” shouted Fred. “We’ll have to cross over.”

“I hope they have some kind of a fire. I’m almost frozen stiff!”
muttered Margy.




CHAPTER XXII

CAUGHT IN A STORM


The boys helped the three girls down the bank and, slipping and
sliding, they made their way across the river to the other side.
Scrambling up this bank, they found the building was further back than
they had supposed.

“I’m so co-old!” shivered Margy. “I don’t see any smoke coming out of a
chimney. I don’t believe any one lives there.”

“I don’t see any chimney,” declared Ward, trying to brush the snow away
from before his face so that he could see clearly--a hopeless task.

“Well, some one must live there,” said Fred, impatiently. “Hurry up, or
we’ll freeze standing here.”

It was dark now, and they were stiff and tired. Their clothes were damp
and their gloves soaked through. Worse still, they were hungry, and
Artie, who had often sighed to be an explorer, began to wonder whether
he was going to starve to death in the snow.

Fred led the way toward the building and the others followed him,
longing for the sight of a bright fire and a lighted lamp. The ground
was humpy, and Margy began to cry when she fell down.

“I’m so tired,” she sniffed, as Polly pulled her up. “If any one lives
in that house they’re not at home, because it’s dark.”

“Perhaps there’s a light at the back,” said Fred. “Maybe they only have
a light in the kitchen.”

“Do you know what I think, Fred?” called Polly, raising her voice above
the wind which still buffeted them unmercifully. “I think that is a
barn! It doesn’t look like a house to me.”

“If it’s a barn, that means there’s a house near here,” shouted Fred.
“That’s good luck.”

But when they had reached the barn--for it was a barn, after
all--another disappointment awaited them. The building was open on both
sides, and the wind swept through the wide doorways and hurled the snow
into the corners, where it lay in heaps.

The barn was an old one, evidently abandoned years before!

“Come on in,” said Fred, refusing to be discouraged. “It can’t be as
cold as it is outside. And because the barn isn’t used is no sign
there isn’t a house near. There must be a house!”

The six forlorn chums stepped inside the dark doorway and found
themselves in a cavern, or so it seemed to them.

“Be careful,” warned Polly. “Some of the boards may be rotten and we
might step through them, or fall into a hole.”

They felt their way carefully, following the wall, till they were well
back from the doorway through which they had entered. Protected in a
measure from the wind, they felt warmer at once.

“You stand still,” commanded Fred. “I’m going over to that other
doorway and look out.”

He felt his way around slowly, and when he felt the wind blow full in
his face he knew he had reached the other doorway.

“Say, I see a light!” he called to the others. “A little light, and
that must be in a house. It looks a mile away, but I’ll bet you it is a
house.”

“I won’t go another step,” declared Margy, sitting down on the floor.
“Not another step. I’m too tired to move.”

“But you’ll freeze here,” said Polly. “Won’t she, Fred?”

“I’d just as lief freeze as to break my leg walking over that humpy
ground again,” retorted Margy, bitterly.

“Well, I’d rather stay here, too,” announced Jess. “You don’t know
positively that that light is in a house. And if it is in a house, it
may be miles and miles away. I’d rather stay here till morning.”

They were all so tired and cold that a quarrel might easily have
developed, had not Polly proposed a plan.

“I tell you what let’s do,” she said good-temperedly. “Let Jess and
Margy stay here and Ward and Artie take care of them; then I’ll go with
you, Fred, and we’ll see if that light is in a house. Perhaps we’ll
find the house that goes with this barn first, and that will be nearer.”

Ward and Artie wanted to go with Polly and Fred, but were finally
persuaded to remain with the two girls.

“Don’t stay all night,” begged Artie, as Polly whispered to him to be
good and not let Margy get frightened.

“Say, Polly, you’re all right,” Fred told her, striking off in the
direction of the twinkling light. “I know you’re dead tired and cold,
too, but you don’t grunt. Uh!” and Fred gave a grunt himself.

“What’s the matter?” cried Polly, anxiously. “What is it, Fred?”

“I walked into something,” said Fred. “Nearly knocked my teeth out.
Don’t know what it is, but it feels like a tower of some sort.”

“I know,” cried Polly, feeling the “tower.” “It’s one of the brick
foundations of a porch, Fred. Feel the loose bricks under the snow?
This is probably where the house that goes with that old barn stood,
and it either burned down or fell down.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Fred. “See, here’s the cellar. I won’t
grumble because I walked into that column of bricks--if I hadn’t we
might have both stepped into that cellar, and that wouldn’t have been
any fun.”

Carefully and feeling each step of the way, they skirted the open
cellar. The wind and the snow made going very slow, and the twinkling
light seemed to come no nearer.

“Want to stop and get your breath, Polly?” asked Fred, a little
anxiously, when they had been walking some minutes in silence.

“I’m--all--right,” gasped Polly. “But I’ve got my scarf tied over my
mouth to keep the wind out. I can’t talk.”

They plodded on after that, and to Fred’s delight the light came nearer
and nearer at last. Soon they could see that it shone from the window
of a house and streamed feebly out on a broken picket fence.

“At least they’re at home,” said Fred, thankfully. “You can stay and
get warm, Polly, and I’ll go back and get the others.”

He was sure their troubles were over, and he rapped loudly on the door
with visions of a hot supper dancing before his eyes.

No one answered his knock, and he rapped again. Still silence.

“We’ll both knock,” said Polly, and the two of them beat a tattoo on
the door.

“Some one’s coming,” whispered Polly. “Hark!”

They heard a bolt drawn back and a key in the lock turned. Then the
door opened slowly and an old woman peered out.

“Who’s there?” she asked. “What do you want?”

“Please, we’re caught in the storm,” said Polly. “May we come in and
get warm?”

“Why, you’re children!” said the old woman, in astonishment. “Come
in--come in. Though you can’t get warm, I’m thinking. I got out of bed
to answer your knock, and there’s no wood in the house to make a fire.”

She opened the door wider and beckoned them to come in. They saw a
square room, neatly furnished and evidently used as a combination
sitting room and kitchen.

“You must be chilled through,” said the old woman. “I can fix a fire
for you, if this boy will go out to the woodshed and get some wood;
there’s plenty cut there, but I couldn’t go out in the storm. My
rheumatism took me this afternoon, and I had to go to bed.”

“There are four more of us, waiting in a barn,” explained Polly, as
Fred went out to find the woodshed, carrying a lantern the old woman
gave him. “We were out skating this afternoon and lost our way.”

“Dear, dear, you must be hungry, too! Now, if you could cook, there’s
eggs in that bowl on the shelf and bread and butter and jam a-plenty. I
have cold baked beans left over, too.”

The old woman could hardly walk, and Polly said at once that she would
cook the eggs.

“Then let your brother build up a good fire and put a kettle of water
on to heat, and you set the table and get the supper ready. I’ll tell
you where to find things. I declare, I feel better already, having some
one to talk to. And that fire feels good, too. I won’t be caught this
way again; I’ll fill up my woodbox when I have a chance, and then when
I’m flat on my back I won’t have to worry.”

Fred built a roaring fire in the stove, filled the woodbox, and then,
not stopping to dry his gloves--to say nothing of his shoes, which
were soaked through--he set off to the barn to bring the rest back with
him.

While he was gone, Polly first made some tea and boiled an egg
for their kind hostess. Then she set the table at the old woman’s
directions, told her who they were and explained about the Riddle Club
and that Fred was not her brother. She cut the bread and scrambled
the eggs, and when Fred and the others returned they found a cheerful
picture awaiting them--a warm kitchen and a table set with six bowls
of milk and a mound of bread already buttered, not to mention a pan
of baked beans, the reddest of red currant jam, and the yellowest of
golden eggs sizzling in a pan on the stove.

“Take off your wet things,” ordered the old woman. “I guess I have
enough bedroom slippers to go round. I have ten nieces, and every
blessed one of them has, at some time or other, knit me a pair of
bedroom slippers. They don’t seem to think I wear anything else.”

The girls and boys laughed, but when they had taken off their heavy,
wet shoes, the red and pink and blue and purple wool knitted slippers
felt very cozy and warm to their tired feet. Their gloves and mittens
were hung on a line behind the stove and the shoes arranged in a row on
the hearth, and then they sat down to enjoy their belated supper.

“I suppose your folks will be worried to death about you, but we can’t
help it,” said the old woman. Her name, she told them, was Mrs. Wicks.
“There’s a telephone in a house about half a mile away, but a storm
like this always breaks down the wires, even if you were fit to go out
again to-night, which you’re not. I never saw a storm come up quicker
than this one did, and it’s lucky for me you came along. I haven’t a
fancy to have a rheumatic attack and no wood for a fire in the house.”

Artie and Ward went to sleep at the table, and that brought up the
question of where they were to sleep.

“I’ve got two bedrooms, besides mine,” said Mrs. Wicks. “But they
haven’t been used this winter. I’m afraid they’re damp.”

“That will be all right,” said Polly, politely.

“No, it won’t be all right,” declared Mrs. Wicks, with vigor. “I don’t
aim to have you take cold, sleeping in damp sheets. I can’t get the
things out, but you go in and bring the sheets and blankets off those
two beds and hang ’em on chairs before the fire; that will dry them.
You can put the two little fellows on my bed till theirs is ready.”

But neither Polly nor Fred would hear to this, so Artie and Ward were
finally shaken awake and set to work carrying out blankets while the
girls washed the dishes. Mrs. Wicks had had a nap before their arrival,
and she was enjoying herself, but Polly and Margy confided to each
other that never, never, never had they been half so tired and sleepy.

Finally the blankets and sheets were pronounced dry, the beds made up
again, and, leaning on Fred and Polly, Mrs. Wicks hobbled to her own
room. In two minutes after they had lain down, the six members of the
Riddle Club were fast asleep, and though the wind howled all night and
shook the windows and rattled loose shutters, not a sound did they
hear.




CHAPTER XXIII

MRS. WICKS


Polly was the first to wake in the morning. She opened one eye
sleepily, saw her dress hanging over a chair back, caught a glimpse of
unfamiliar wall paper on the side of the room, and sat up with a jerk.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jess, drowsily.

“Oh!” said Polly. “I remember now. We’re here. Say, Jess, it must be
late; the sun is shining.”

“Then it’s stopped snowing,” said Jess. “We can go home. Let’s get
dressed in a jiffy.”

Margy woke up, and it did not take the three girls long to dress, for
they had slept in their underclothes, having removed only their dresses
and stockings.

Polly peeped out into the kitchen and saw Fred pumping water at the
sink.

“Want to wash your face?” he whispered. “Here’s a towel. It’s stopped
snowing, but you ought to see the snow!”

Polly stood on tiptoe to glance out of the window over the sink. The
sun was dazzling, and trees and fences and outbuildings were plastered
with drifts of snow, flung against them by the wind.

“Isn’t it pretty!” cried Polly, in delight.

“It won’t be so pretty to walk home,” said Ward, who joined them.

“Are you children up?” called Mrs. Wicks. “I wish one of you girls
would help me get dressed. My knee isn’t any worse, but then it isn’t
any better.”

“I’ll help her,” offered Margy, hastily. “You build the fire, Fred,
because it’s freezing cold in this kitchen.”

Fred and Artie went out to get more wood, for Fred suggested that they
leave the woodbox untouched, and Margy went to help the old woman get
dressed.

By the time she was ready, the kitchen was warm and Polly and Jess set
the breakfast table, while Mrs. Wicks stirred up griddle cakes and
showed them how to make oatmeal.

“The man on the next farm always brings me milk,” the old lady
explained, “and it shows how deep the snow must be, if he can’t get
here. It’s lucky I have some milk left from yesterday.”

They had a cheerful breakfast, and when it was over Polly asked if
there wasn’t something they could do to help.

“We can’t walk home through the snow while it is as deep as this,” she
said sensibly, “and perhaps we can help you, if you’ll tell us how.
What would you do if you weren’t lame this morning?”

“I’d feed my chickens and shovel some paths around the house and down
to the mail-box,” said Mrs. Wicks, promptly. “Then I’d sit down and
sew.”

Fred and Artie and Ward said they could do the outdoor work, and they
went at it with a will. Though before that they found that their shoes
were so stiff it wasn’t easy to get them on. But Mrs. Wicks brought
out some grease and showed them how to rub it in, and that made the
leather pliable again. Fred did the girls’ shoes for them, and Margy
was especially grateful, for she loved to be comfortable and she had
been dreading to put on her stiffened shoes.

The three girls washed and dried the dishes, swept and straightened up
the kitchen, made the beds and watered the geranium that Mrs. Wicks
said couldn’t be killed, for no matter how cold the kitchen was, it
lived, winter after winter, if protected by a paper at night.

“I wish you’d come and live with me all winter,” the old lady said,
when Ward brought in six eggs he had found in the henhouse and Fred and
Artie reported that a path had been swept out to the mail-box. “I like
company. One of my nieces comes to stay with me part of the time, and
she’s coming the day after New Year’s. But she isn’t young like you.”

Fred asked about the barn in which they had stayed, and Mrs. Wicks told
them that the place had once been a prosperous farm.

“The house burned down one summer, and the people farmed it for a time,
living in the barn and using it as a house,” she said. “Then they sold
the place and moved away, and the new owner never did anything with it.
One by one the outbuildings fell to pieces, and they say one good wind
will blow the barn over, if it gets it in the right corner.”

“There’s rats in it!” shuddered Margy. “I was sitting on the floor last
night, waiting for Fred to come back, and a horrid rat ran right across
my lap!”

“She let out a yell that could be heard in River Bend,” said Ward,
grinning. “And then she rushed outdoors and wouldn’t come back. Fred
found her standing in the snow, crying.”

“Well, I’d cry, too, if a rat ran over me,” said Jess, stoutly. “Ugly,
horrid things!”

Mrs. Wicks got out her box of patchwork and showed the gay-colored
patches to her visitors. Like many lonely old ladies, she was fond of
telling stories about her girlhood, and with a brand new audience the
temptation was too great to be resisted.

“You girls don’t sew patchwork nowadays, do you?” she asked, smiling.

“We can knit,” offered Polly, apologetically. “But none of us ever made
a quilt. My grandmother did, when she was a little girl, though.”

“Ward speaking of the rat that frightened Margy, reminded me of a scare
I had when I was a little girl,” said Mrs. Wicks.

“I had gone to visit my Aunt Deborah, of whom I was very fond. Aunt had
a son, about sixteen--I was then eleven--and, dear me, what a tease
Coburn was! He called me ‘Miss Prim’ and pulled my hair whenever he had
a chance. I was supposed to sew on my patchwork every afternoon, even
when visiting, and Coburn thought that a girl cousin who spent hours
sewing wasn’t much fun to have around. He would have liked me to be a
boy cousin and climb trees with him.”

“But we girls climb trees!” put in Jess. But Mrs. Wicks paid no
attention to the remark, and went on with her story.

“Well, I was sitting quietly with my little sewing basket one
afternoon, in the parlor window. Aunt Deborah kept the parlor tightly
closed most of the time, and there must have been some special reason
why I was allowed to sit there and sew, but I don’t recall it. Perhaps
because I was company. The parlor window overlooked the road, and,
girl-like, I was interested in the various teams that drove past. I
liked to see what people were doing as much as any one. Coburn wasn’t
anywhere around, and Aunt Deborah was still upstairs finishing her nap.

“A spic and span, shiny new buggy went past with a girl dressed in
white driving, and I leaned forward to look, at the same time putting
out my hand to take a spool of thread from the basket. I felt something
move under my hand, but I thought it was the spool of thread rolling
from my fingers. Unconsciously I took a firmer clutch, and something
squeaked. I had picked up a little white mouse!”

“Ugh! How awful! Didn’t you scream?” asked Margy.

“Scream! I should think I did!” returned Mrs. Wicks, smiling at the
recollection. “To my startled eyes that basket seemed alive with white
mice, and I threw it across the room in one direction and my patchwork
and thimble in another. Then I fled, still screaming.

“Aunt Deborah came downstairs on the run, and Coburn mysteriously
appeared from some secret place. He caught me as I came rushing out of
the door and, with some difficulty, calmed me. I think he was a little
frightened, for I couldn’t stop crying at first and nothing would
induce me to go into the parlor or touch my work basket again. Aunt
Deborah made Coburn pick up the scattered spools and put the basket
in order. As for his three pet mice, no one ever knew what became of
them--they may have run off to live with their relations. Anyway, they
never came back and Aunt Deborah declared it served Coburn right for
playing such a trick.”

Margy said that she thought mice were the worst animals that ever
lived, except rats, while Fred contended that mice were all right when
you knew them. This started an argument that lasted till Mrs. Wicks
suggested they go down to the mail-box and see if the postman had got
through the drifts.

“If we’d only brought our sleds, instead of the skates, we could get
home,” said Ward.

“But it wasn’t snowing when we left,” said Polly. “Oh, dear, I do hope
the folks aren’t worrying about us.”

“If we had some snowshoes, we could walk home, on top of the snow,”
said Artie. “Why couldn’t we make some?”

“Out of what?” asked Fred, promptly.

“Barrel staves,” replied Artie.

“I think stilts would be better,” declared Ward. “Stilts would hold us
up, out of the drifts.”

“Snowshoes are what we need,” decreed Fred. “Perhaps we could make them
out of barrels. Let’s see if Mrs. Wicks has any barrels she doesn’t
want.”

“Barrels?” said Mrs. Wicks, when they asked her. “Oh, my, yes! plenty
of barrels out in the woodshed. Do anything you like with them.”

With the three girls as interested, if not hopeful, spectators (Polly
was sure she couldn’t walk on snowshoes after they were made and
Margy said frankly she didn’t think they would ever be made) the boys
ripped two barrels apart and sandpapered the staves. The sandpaper was
worn pretty smooth--it was all Mrs. Wicks had--and the staves were
remarkably rough, but they did the best they could.

“You try them first, Fred,” suggested Artie. “How are you going to keep
these snowshoes on?”

“Skate straps,” said Fred, briefly.

He managed to strap a stave to each of his feet, using his skate
straps, and then, slowly and gingerly, stepped out of the woodshed.

“The way to walk on snowshoes,” he announced, “is not to lift your feet
and put ’em down again. You glide along.”

“All right, let’s see you glide,” said Artie, eagerly.

Fred struck out with what he fondly believed to be a gliding motion. He
sunk one foot deeply into the snow, balanced there a precarious moment
with his other foot waving wildly in the air and then crashed over into
a handy drift.

“Of course there’s a knack in getting used to them,” he gasped, as the
others pulled him out. “I’ll get it after a while.”

“Well, if I have to walk on those things to get home, I’m going to stay
here,” said Jess.

“There’s the postman!” cried Margy. “Look, he’s putting something in
the box!”

They ran down the path they had shoveled, Fred discarding his
“snowshoes” as hindrances, and found the postman to be a jolly person
wrapped in many mufflers and driving a large white horse harnessed to
an old-fashioned sleigh.

“Say, there’s some one looking for you kids,” he said, as soon as
he saw the children. “I met a team about a mile back, two men in a
sleigh. They asked me if I’d seen anything of three boys and three
girls. And then I hadn’t, and told them so.”

“Daddy!” cried Polly. “It must be Daddy and Mr. Larue. Whereabouts did
you see them?”

“They were following this road,” said the postman. “Looks like them
coming now. I’ve had to make so many stops I guess they’ve caught up
with me. Yes, they’re waving to you. See ’em?”




CHAPTER XXIV

HOME AGAIN


The children needed no snowshoes to lend them speed as they ran down
the road. Driving toward them were Mr. Marley and Mr. Larue in a sleigh
drawn by a horse Fred recognized as “Old Tom,” one of Mr. Davis’s
horses.

“Well, you certainly have upset the family,” said Mr. Marley, as Artie
hurled himself into his lap and the others tried to find a place on the
runners.

“Did Mother worry?” asked Polly, anxiously. “We were all right, only we
couldn’t get home.”

“Of course we worried,” answered Mr. Marley. “I don’t think any one has
had a wink of sleep all night. We went up the river as far as Jackson’s
Pond, hunting for you, but the wind forced us to give up there.”

“Where did you spend the night?” asked Mr. Larue, his arm around Jess.

“Oh, we stayed at Mrs. Wicks’ house,” said Ward, cheerfully.

“And who is Mrs. Wicks?” asked Mr. Larue, in surprise.

“She’s an old lady--she lives there,” said Polly, pointing to the
house. “She had rheumatism in her knee, but she told us what to do and
we had good things to eat and everything was lovely.”

“Except staying in the barn,” amended Margy. “A rat ran over me, Mr.
Marley.”

“We’ll drive on to Mrs. Wicks’ house,” said Mr. Marley, “and thank her
for her kindness. I don’t suppose she has a telephone, and if she had,
the wires would probably be down. I’d like to tell the worried mothers
that we have found you, safe and sound.”

Mrs. Wicks hobbled to the door to greet her visitors. She seemed
delighted to have more company, and she would not hear of their
starting back before she had cooked dinner for them.

Mr. Marley and Mr. Larue knew that she spoke wisely. The roads were
badly drifted and, in spite of the sunshine, it was bitingly cold.
If they had dinner before they started, the ride would be much more
comfortable for them all.

So they said they would stay, and Mrs. Wicks hobbled about, delighted
to have what she called “a full table.”

“It’s something like!” she said, when they sat down three-quarters of
an hour later to a steaming hot dinner. “Something like, to have nine
at the table.”

While the girls helped her with the dishes--for anxious as the fathers
were to start home they would not leave the old lady with all the extra
work to do alone--the boys carried in a great pile of wood, filling the
woodbox to overflowing and stacking the sticks on the floor beside it.
They fed and watered the chickens, so that a trip out to the henhouse
that night would be unnecessary, saw that the lamps were filled,
went down to the road to get the milk the neighboring farmer finally
brought, and so left Mrs. Wicks assured of a comfortable night.

“We could have brought her home with us, I suppose,” said Mr. Marley,
as he tucked the children in under the heavy robes, “but she wouldn’t
be happy away from her own home. And she says her niece is coming in a
few days to stay with her for the rest of the winter. But we mustn’t
forget her. We’ll have to come and see her, often.”

“She isn’t poor, is she, Daddy?” asked Polly, thoughtfully, cuddling up
to the heated brick Mrs. Wicks had given her.

The old lady had filled the bottom of the sleigh with hot bricks,
wrapped in burlap. They were as good as stoves, the children declared.

“No, Mrs. Wicks isn’t poor--not what we call poor,” answered Mr.
Marley, who was driving. “She has money enough to live on and owns
her house, she tells me. But she is lonely, and sometimes people need
friends more than they need money.”

The dazzling sunshine made the fields and laden trees very beautiful
to see, but there was a cold wind, and the snow seemed to have melted
very little. For some distance the traveling was fairly good, for the
postman’s sleigh had broken the road, but when they turned into another
road, unbroken drifts confronted them.

“This ought to save us a mile, so I think it’s worth trying,” said
Mr. Marley, as the horse began to flounder. “The way we came was the
longer, but we were following the river to find the children.”

Old Tom didn’t care if the road was a shorter one. He didn’t like the
big drifts, and he saw no reason why he should pretend he did. He shook
his head and snorted and finally stood still.

“We’ll have to get out and encourage him,” said Mr. Larue, cheerfully.
“You stay in, Marley, and the boys and I will show old Tom how easy it
is to wade through snow, if you make up your mind it can be done.”

Mr. Larue got out and the six chums tumbled after him. The girls begged
to help, too, for they were cramped from sitting under the robes. The
sleigh was pretty well filled when they were all in it.

“Gee, it is deep, isn’t it!” exclaimed Artie, as he went in to his
waist. “But look at that bare spot, over there on the field!”

“That’s what the wind did,” Mr. Larue explained. “It blew all the
drifts over into this road and left the fields lightly covered.”

“Why don’t we drive over the fields then?” asked Fred.

“That isn’t such a bad idea, Fred,” called Mr. Marley, who had
overheard. “I’ll see if I can turn old Tom and get through the ditch.”

“Easy on the turn,” cautioned Mr. Larue. “The deepest snow is there in
the ditch.”

“You’ll tip over!” cried Margy, in alarm. “Do be careful, Mr. Marley!”

Mr. Marley laughed and promised not to tip the sleigh over. He turned
the horse’s head toward the ditch and called to him encouragingly. Old
Tom merely shook his ears.

“Doesn’t want to try it,” said Mr. Larue. “I’ll see if I can lead him.
Here, boy, you’re all right. Come on, that’s a good fellow.”

Talking soothingly to the horse, Mr. Larue took hold of the bridle and
pulled gently. The horse pulled also, but the other way.

“He won’t go. Try taking him straight ahead,” Mr. Marley advised. “Look
out, Polly--you’re standing in the way.”

Polly took a step backward, lost her balance, and went over full-length
into a beautiful snow bank. Her feet, coming up with such startling
suddenness were too much for old Tom. With a wild snort he started
forward, nearly pulling Mr. Marley from the seat. Plunging and panting,
the horse plowed ahead, and in a few minutes had worked his way out of
the worst of the drifts.

“Polly! are you all right?” cried Margy, rushing to her chum’s rescue.

“I guess so,” said Polly, a little uncertainly. “Where’s the horse and
sleigh?” she asked, in surprise, as Fred and Margy pulled her out and
set her on her feet.

“All right, Polly?” asked Mr. Larue, hurrying up. “Yes, you seem to be.
Well, that certainly was a novel way to persuade a horse, but it seems
to have given us results.”

Polly had to laugh when she heard that her tumble had made old Tom
change his mind. She said she wasn’t willing to fall over all the rest
of the way home, though; but her father said he didn’t think it would
be necessary.

They climbed into the sleigh again, warm and rosy from their tramping
in the drifts, and old Tom started off as though he had made up his
mind to do his best without further protest.

This time Mr. Larue drove, for Mr. Marley’s hands were stiff from the
cold. Though old Tom was willing, they could not drive fast, and before
they reached the stretch of state road that would take them to River
Bend, the heat had gone from the bricks provided by Mrs. Wicks and
Margy was crying with cold. Polly and Jess were far from comfortable,
but they and the boys were determined to “stick it out.”

“Say, Larue, these youngsters are purple with cold,” said Mr. Marley,
suddenly. “We’ll have to stop for a moment and give them some exercise.”

Margy didn’t want to move, but Mr. Marley lifted her out and put her
down in the road. The rest followed, and Mr. Larue tied old Tom to a
tree.

“Now we have to run,” said Mr. Marley. “From the sleigh to that big
maple tree and back, six times. No one can beg off, and the sooner you
get through with it, the quicker we’ll be home.”

Margy’s feet were like lead and Polly was sure she had no feet at all.
The tree was some distance from the sleigh, and the prospect of running
there and back six times loomed like an impossible task. However, Mr.
Marley started off, and they could do no less than follow.

“I know my feet are broken off!” thought Polly, limping along. “I won’t
look, but I know they’re gone. My mother will be sorry if I come home
without any feet.”

Behind her, Margy was still crying, wiping her eyes on her glove as she
tried to run. The boys kept at it doggedly, their eyes on the ground.

When she had touched the tree three times, Polly made an interesting
discovery--her feet were where they ought to be, right in her shoes.
Better, they felt comfortable, and even warm.

By the time they had completed the six trips, every one was in a
glow--even Margy was smiling.

“Now another hour, and we’ll be home,” said Mr. Marley. “Tumble in,
children, and we’ll be home before you know it.”

The state road provided much easier going. There had been more travel
over it since the storm, and occasionally they passed a sleigh or a
motor truck. But the horse was sadly tired before they came to River
Bend, and they found it easy to believe when reports came in from the
surrounding country that the storm had been the worst, from the point
of view of blocking traffic, that the country had experienced in years.

“Are you frozen? Are you hungry? Where on earth did you stay all night?
Are you sure you haven’t frozen your ears or your toes?” cried the two
mothers together, flying down the steps as the sleigh at last drew up
before the Marley house.

And even after they had heard the story and assured themselves that
none of the six had suffered from hunger or exposure, the mothers
couldn’t rest. They heard the story over and over again, and Mrs.
Marley made her husband promise to take her to see Mrs. Wicks as soon
as the roads were fairly open. Mrs. Larue said she would go, too, and
long after the children were in bed they sat up planning the kind of
box they would pack and what they would put in it to please the old
lady.




CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST OF THE SNOWMAN


It seemed like another Christmas to the members of the Riddle Club, the
day after their experience in getting home. Every one was so glad to
see them that they were allowed to please themselves pretty much, till
Ward made himself sick with too much candy and Margy and Fred quarreled
because they wanted to go skating and coasting at the same time; that
is, each wanted the other to do his or her way.

“Say, it’s beginning to melt,” Fred reported, coming into the house for
lunch. “Hear it drip!”

Mrs. Marley had invited Jess and Ward, and the six chums were together
at the table.

“Thawing!” cried Polly. “It will spoil the skating.”

“But it will take a lot to spoil the coasting,” said Artie. “Let’s go
this afternoon.”

Mr. and Mrs. Williamson were expected back on New Year’s Day, early in
the morning, so Fred and Margy were still staying with the Marleys.

As soon as lunch was over, they got the sleds out and set off for the
hill.

“Gee, when it begins to melt, it sure does start!” observed Ward.

Little rivers of water were running off the roofs and householders were
out opening the gutters.

“It’s the January thaw,” said Margy, wisely.

“It isn’t January till to-morrow,” retorted Jess.

“Does it always thaw in January?” asked Artie, athirst for information.

“Yes, of course,” said Margy. “Some time in January it will thaw.
Always. Mattie Helms told me.”

“Well, I guess it thaws some time in every month,” declared Fred.
“Every winter month, that is,” he added, remembering the changing
seasons.

“Well, this is the January thaw,” insisted Margy. “It will be January
to-morrow, and so it is really time.”

When they reached the hill, they found a number of coasters, though it
was more slush than snow. The runners sent up fine streams of water as
the sleds raced down, and in the ditches on either side of the road a
rushing stream of snow water was pouring.

“Maybe it’s spring,” gasped Jess, as a splash of water struck her in
the face.

“No, we’ll have lots more snow and ice yet,” said Fred. “But I don’t
call this much fun, do you? Let’s go home and go up in the clubroom.”

They were half-soaked already, and no one made any objections to
returning home. Mrs. Marley made them take off their wet shoes and
put on dry ones, and then they went upstairs to play parcheesi in the
clubroom.

“There won’t be much left of Riddle Chap after this,” remarked Polly,
happening to glance from the window while waiting her turn to play.

“Say, he has gone down, hasn’t he?” said Jess, in surprise.

“He’s wasting away,” giggled Polly. “Poor old Riddle Chap! But he’s had
a pretty long life for a snowman.”

The poor snowman was visibly melting. Trickles of water ran over him
and he seemed to be sinking into the ground.

“I’ll be glad when he’s gone,” said Jess. “He brought me bad luck--made
me lose my glove.”

“There’s no such thing as good luck or bad luck,” declared Fred. “You
lost your glove because you didn’t take care of it. Don’t blame that
on poor old Riddle Chap.”

“Don’t you call it bad luck that you lost the bank?” asked Jess,
heedless of Polly’s warning frown.

“No, of course that wasn’t bad luck,” said Fred, stoutly. “That was my
own fault. I put it down somewhere, but I’ll never tell you where. And
Dad wanted me to open a savings-bank account with it, too. I ought to
have taken his advice.”

“You haven’t lost the new bank,” said Artie, who meant to be comforting.

“No, I haven’t,” agreed Fred. “And that isn’t good luck, either. It’s
good care. I look at the bank first thing every night and morning, to
make sure it is in the right place.”

“Perhaps some one took the other bank,” suggested Margy.

Fred glanced at her sharply. She was watching the board and apparently
had just said that without thinking.

“I don’t see how any one could have taken it,” said Fred, and then it
was his turn to play.

He still thought, now and then, that Carrie Pepper knew more about the
bank than she cared to tell. But Fred had made up his mind not to
say anything until he had more than suspicions to back him, and he
resolutely refused to put his thought into words.

That night it turned a little colder, as it usually does, and the
melting snow froze in little lace ruffles on the edges of the roofs.
Riddle Chap had an icicle on what was left of his nose, and Polly was
hopeful that he would stay as he was and not shrink any more. Alas!
New Year’s Day dawned with a burst of sunlight that started the little
streams running again, turned the coasting hill to a sea of slush, and
hastened the sure disappearance of the once handsome Riddle Chap.

“It’s a good thing we have his picture,” said Polly, mournfully, at
breakfast.

“You can build another snowman, when another snow comes,” said Mr.
Marley, cheerfully.

But Polly said it wouldn’t be Riddle Chap, and of course no one could
deny that.

However, it was impossible to feel sober on such a bright morning, and
“Happy New Year!” sounded up and down Elm Road as the children greeted
each other. School would open the day after to-morrow, and they were
determined to have as much fun as possible before the holidays were
definitely over.

Breakfast was barely finished when the Williamson car came down the
road, bringing Mr. and Mrs. Williamson back to their home. They had
much to tell about their visit in Rye and messages from “the old
hermit,” as the youngsters still called Mr. Field, as well as from his
sister, whom they had never seen, but who knew them quite well through
Mr. Kirby’s and Mr. Adams’ descriptions. The two cousins had sent a
large box of chocolates to be shared by the six chums.

“Mother thinks,” said Mr. Williamson, watching Artie trying to swallow
a chocolate covered cherry that threatened to drown him in syrup,
“that, since it is so warm to-day, we might drive out and see Mrs.
Wicks.”

“Come on! Let’s go!” cried Fred. “We’ll take her some of the
chocolates--maybe she likes candy.”

Mr. Williamson laughed.

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But, Fred, stop and consider the car a
moment. It is a seven-passenger, but how am I going to pack twelve into
the space reserved for seven?”

“It would be kind of crowded,” admitted Fred. “I’m willing to stay at
home, Dad. Let the others go.”

“Suppose we arrange it this way,” said Mrs. Williamson: “You children
all stay at home this time--you’ll find plenty to do to amuse
yourselves. We won’t go till after lunch and we’ll be back in time for
supper. We feel that we’d like to visit with Mrs. Wicks and take her a
little something, and it really wouldn’t be very interesting for you.
Then next time Daddy will take the whole Riddle Club, and we grown-ups
will stay at home.”

So that was the way the plan was finally made, and after an early lunch
the fathers and mothers drove off with baskets and boxes of goodies for
Mrs. Wicks, including some of the delicious chocolates the children had
insisted on sending her.

“Let’s tip old Riddle Chap over,” proposed Artie, aching for a little
exercise. “There’s no use in waiting for him to melt away. Doesn’t he
look seedy, though?”

In truth, the old snowman did look seedy. He had long ago lost his hat
and his pine tree lay on the ground at his feet. Gone were the letters,
R.C. In fact, he looked like a regular tramp of a snowman.

“One, two, three!” called Fred, as the boys leaned against the rapidly
melting wreck.

At “three!” they gave a mighty push. Over went the ball that had formed
the snowman’s body.

“Look how soft it is!” cried Polly, poking it with her toe. “It’s
nothing but slush and water.”

“What’s that?” Jess’s sharp eyes had caught a glimpse of something dark.

She swooped down upon the pile of soft snow and seized the something. A
sharp tug, and she had pulled out--her missing glove!

“Look! Look!” she shouted. “Look! Here’s the glove I lost! It was in
the snowman all the time!”

The same thought came to Polly and Fred, and they leaped for the fallen
snowman’s body.

Fred reached it first, and his shoe hit something that gave back a
metallic sound.

He stooped and cleared away some of the slush. Slowly he straightened
up, something in his hands.

“It’s the bank!” screamed Margy. “Fred found the bank! Look! Polly!
Jess! Ward! Artie! Look! Fred’s found the bank!”

Her excited clamor brought Carrie Pepper from her house. As they
crowded around him, Fred saw Carrie come running through the snow.

“So she didn’t know a thing about it,” he thought. “I’m glad I didn’t
say anything.”

“Is the money there?” Ward kept asking. “Are the dues inside, Fred?”

Well, the money was safe enough, Fred soon discovered. And Jess’s
glove, dried carefully behind the kitchen range, was pronounced as good
as new.

While Fred wouldn’t say that good luck had brought the bank back, he
said he was willing Jess should say good luck brought back her glove.

When the grown-ups came home at dusk, they were astonished to have the
car surrounded by six dancing Indians who came tumbling out of the
Marley house without hats or coats. These Indians danced madly around
the car, singing a chorus that at first could not be understood.

“The bank! The bank!” warbled the singers. “Fred found the bank! And
Jess’s glove--that’s found, too! And the money is all right! And the
glove is dry and it isn’t hurt a bit!”

But when they finally understood, the fathers and mothers were almost
as excited as the members of the Riddle Club.

The next morning Mr. Williamson took Fred and the recovered bank and
the other five members of the club down to the bank, where an account
was opened in the name of the Riddle Club.

“And wait!” said Fred, when he was the proud custodian of the
green-covered bankbook. “Wait till the Conundrum Club hears of this!”


THE END




SIX LITTLE BUNKERS SERIES

By LAURA LEE HOPE

Author of The Bobbsey Twins Books, The Bunny Brown Series, The
Make-Believe Series, Etc.

  =Durably Bound. Illustrated. Uniform Style of Binding.=
  =Every Volume Complete in Itself.=

Delightful stories for little boys and girls which sprung into
immediate popularity. To know the six little Bunkers is to take them
at once to your heart, they are so intensely human, so full of fun and
cute sayings. Each story has a little plot of its own--one that can be
easily followed--and all are written in Miss Hope’s most entertaining
manner. Clean, wholesome volumes which ought to be on the bookshelf of
every child in the land.

  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT GRANDMA BELL’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT AUNT JO’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT COUSIN TOM’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT GRANDPA FORD’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT UNCLE FRED’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT CAPTAIN BEN’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT COWBOY JACK’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT MAMMY JUNE’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT FARMER JOEL’S
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS AT MILLER NED’S

  GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK




THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES

By LAURA LEE HOPE

Author of the Popular “Bobbsey Twins” Books, Etc.

  =Durably Bound. Illustrated. Uniform Style of Binding.=
  =Every Volume Complete in Itself.=

These stories by the author of the “Bobbsey Twins” Books are eagerly
welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their
eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive
little Bunny Brown and his cunning, trustful sister Sue.

  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA’S FARM
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU’S CITY HOME
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR SHETLAND PONY
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE GIVING A SHOW
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CHRISTMAS TREE COVE
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE SUNNY SOUTH
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE KEEPING STORE
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR TRICK DOG
  BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT A SUGAR CAMP

  GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK




THE BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS

For Little Men and Women

By LAURA LEE HOPE

Author of “The Bunny Brown Series,” Etc.

  =Durably Bound. Illustrated. Uniform Style of Binding.=
  =Every Volume Complete in Itself.=

These books for boys and girls between the ages of three and ten stands
among children and their parents of this generation where the books of
Louisa May Alcott stood in former days. The haps and mishaps of this
inimitable pair of twins, their many adventures and experiences are a
source of keen delight to imaginative children everywhere.

  THE BOBBSEY TWINS
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN A GREAT CITY
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE GREAT WEST
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT CEDAR CAMP
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE COUNTY FAIR
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS CAMPING OUT
  THE BOBBSEY TWINS AND BABY MAY

  GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK




THE MAKE-BELIEVE STORIES

(Trademark Registered.)

By LAURA LEE HOPE

Author of THE BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS, ETC.

Colored Wrappers and Illustrations by HARRY L. SMITH

In this fascinating line of books Miss Hope has the various toys come
to life “when nobody is looking” and she puts them through a series of
adventures as interesting as can possibly be imagined.

THE STORY OF A SAWDUST DOLL

  How the toys held a party at the Toy Counter; how the Sawdust Doll
  was taken to the home of a nice little girl, and what happened to her
  there.

THE STORY OF A WHITE ROCKING HORSE

  He was a bold charger and a man purchased him for his son’s birthday.
  Once the Horse had to go to the Toy Hospital, and my! what sights he
  saw there.

THE STORY OF A LAMB ON WHEELS

  She was a dainty creature and a sailor bought her and took her to a
  little girl relative and she had a great time.

THE STORY OF A BOLD TIN SOLDIER

  He was Captain of the Company and marched up and down in the store at
  night. Then he went to live with a little boy and had the time of his
  life.

THE STORY OF A CANDY RABBIT

  He was continually in danger of losing his life by being eaten up.
  But he had plenty of fun, and often saw his many friends from the Toy
  Counter.

THE STORY OF A MONKEY ON A STICK

  He was mighty lively and could do many tricks. The boy who owned him
  gave a show, and many of the Monkey’s friends were among the actors.

THE STORY OF A CALICO CLOWN

  He was a truly comical chap and all the other toys loved him greatly.

THE STORY OF A NODDING DONKEY

  He made happy the life of a little lame boy and did lots of other
  good deeds.

THE STORY OF A CHINA CAT

  The China Cat had many adventures, but enjoyed herself most of the
  time.

THE STORY OF A PLUSH BEAR

  This fellow came from the North Pole, stopped for a while at the toy
  store, and was then taken to the seashore by his little master.

THE STORY OF A STUFFED ELEPHANT

  He was a wise looking animal and had a great variety of adventures.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK




LITTLE JOURNEYS TO HAPPYLAND

(Trademark Registered)

By DAVID CORY

Individual Colored Wrappers. Profusely Illustrated

=Printed in large type--easy to read. For children from 4 to 8 years.=

A new series of exciting adventures by the author of LITTLE JACK RABBIT
books.

  The Happyland is reached by various routes: If you should happen to
  miss the Iceberg Express maybe you can take the Magic Soap Bubble, or
  in case that has already left, the Noah’s Ark may be waiting for you.

  This series is unique in that it deals with unusual and exciting
  adventures on land and sea and in the air.

=The Cruise of the Noah’s Ark=

  This is a good rainy day story. On just such a day Mr. Noah invites
  Marjorie to go for a trip in the Noah’s Ark. She gets aboard just in
  time and away it floats out into the big wide world.

=The Magic Soap Bobble=

  The king of the gnomes has a magic pipe with which he blows a
  wonderful bubble and taking Ed. with him they both have a delightful
  time in Gnomeland.

=The Iceberg Express=

  The Mermaid’s magic comb changes little Mary Louise into a mermaid.
  The Polar Bear Porter on the iceberg Express invites her to take a
  trip with him and away they go on a little journey to Happyland.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK




LITTLE JACK RABBIT BOOKS

(Trademark Registered)

By DAVID CORY

Author of LITTLE JOURNEYS TO HAPPYLAND

=Colored Wrappers With Text Illustrations=

A new and unique series about the furred and feathered little people of
the wood and meadow.

Children will eagerly follow the doings of little Jack Rabbit, who,
every morning as soon as he has polished the front door knob and fed
the canary, sets out from his little house in the bramble patch to meet
his friends in the Shady Forest and Sunny Meadow. And the clever way he
escapes from his three enemies, Danny Fox, Mr. Wicked Weasel and Hungry
Hawk will delight the youngsters.

  LITTLE JACK RABBIT’S ADVENTURES
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND DANNY FOX
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND THE SQUIRREL BROTHERS
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND CHIPPY CHIPMUNK
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND THE BIG BROWN BEAR
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND UNCLE JOHN HARE
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND PROFESSOR CROW
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND OLD MAN WEASEL
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND MR. WICKED WOLF
  LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND HUNGRY HAWK

  GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.