who had disappeared, soon returned with a huge wicker basket. “I thought we might just as well keep on with our ‘Spread Sunshine’ activities,” she explained, “even though we have added a new meaning to our ‘S. S. C.’” She was taking out small all-over aprons of blue gingham as she spoke. The name of a girl was pinned to each one.
“Sure thing.” Merry reached for her garment. “Our fingers can sew for the orphans while our tongues can unravel mysteries if – ” her eyes were twinkling as they turned inquiringly toward Peggy Pierce, “our committee of two has unearthed one as yet.”
“Of course we haven’t!” was the maiden’s indignant response. “How could we find a mystery in a snow-storm like this?”
“True enough!” Merry said in a more conciliatory tone. “I really had not expected you to.”
“In truth,” Rose, curled in the big easy chair near the fire, put in teasingly, “for that matter, we don’t expect a real mystery to be unearthed in this little sound-asleep town of Sunnyside. Goodness, don’t we know everybody in it, and don’t our parents know their parents and their grandparents and – ”
“Well, somebody new might come to town,” Doris, the second member of the sleuth committee, remarked hopefully.
“Sure thing, someone might,” Merry said with such emphasis on the last word that Bertha dropped her work on her lap to comment: “You speak as though you knew that someone new is coming.”
“I do!” Merry replied calmly, bending over her sewing that the girls might not see how eager she was to tell them her news.
“Stop being so tantalizing, Merry! What in the world do you know today that you didn’t know Saturday?” Peg inquired.
“Oh, I know, I know!” Rose sang out. “It’s something that handsome boy, Alfred Morrison, told you when he went to call on Jack. Out with it, Merry; don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Of course! How stupid we didn’t think to ask what happened after you and Alfred Morrison had left us at our homes,” Doris put in. “We knew he was going with you to call on Jack. Is he coming to live in Sunnyside? Say, wouldn’t it be keen if he did?”
“Well, you are all warm anyway,” Merry conceded. “The someone who is coming to live in Sunnyside; I mean the someone to whom I am referring, is a girl, but I guess we won’t want to cultivate her acquaintance at all, at all.”
“Merry Lee, if you don’t tell us, I shall come over there and shake you until you do.” Betty Byrd was so tiny that this threat made the girls laugh gaily, but it had the desired effect, for their president ceased teasing and told them a story which interested them greatly.
CHAPTER V.
A MISCHIEVOUS PLAN
“Well, to begin at the beginning, Jack was pleased as punch to see Alfred Morrison, and for the first fifteen minutes they talked of nothing but college prep, athletics, fraternities and the like. Then Mother called me and I left them alone in the library. When I returned, half an hour later, Alfred was gone, but this is the tale Brother told me. It seems our new friend has a sister about our age, Geraldine by name.”
“Oho,” Bertha put in, “then that is who the newcomer to our town is to be.”
Peg laughed. “We’ll have to put you on the sleuth committee, Bursie, but do hurry and tell us the worst.”
“Perhaps it’s the best,” Gertrude suggested, but Merry shook her head. “Worst is more like it. But here goes: Mr. Morrison, their father, lived in this village when he was a boy. He was mischievous and wilful and he had trouble with his father, who was stern and unrelenting. When he was sixteen he ran away to sea and was gone three years on a voyage around the world. When he returned he went West, where he married and made a good deal of money in railroads and mines. During this time he had often written to his Mother begging to be forgiven, but his letters were always returned to him and so he supposed that his parents no longer cared for him. At last, however, when his wife died, leaving him with two small children, he came back to Dorchester only to find that his father and mother were gone and the old home falling into rack and ruin.
“Sad at heart, he settled in the city where Alfred and his sister were brought up by tutors and governesses.”
“Oh, the poor things!” Doris Drexel said pityingly. “My heart aches for any boy or girl brought up without knowing the tenderness of a mother’s love.”
“That brings the story up to the present,” Merry continued. “Last week Mr. Morrison left very suddenly for Europe in the interests of his business and he may be gone all winter. He did not want to leave his son and daughter alone in the city house with the servants, and so he sent Alfred down here to see Colonel Wainright, who was his pal when he was a boy, to ask him if they might remain with him for a few months. The Colonel was delighted, Alfred told Jack, and so they are both coming to our village to spend the winter.”
“But, Merry, why do you think that is not good news? I think it will be jolly fun to have another girl friend. There’s always room for one more.”
Gertrude said this in her kindly way, but Peg protested: “There certainly isn’t room for one more in the Seven Sleuths’ Club.”
“Indeed not!” Merry seconded. “But don’t worry, the haughty Miss Geraldine won’t want to associate with simpering country milkmaids.”
“With what?” Every girl in the room dropped her sewing on her lap and stared her amazement.
Merry laughed as she replied: “Just that, no less. I knew how indignant you’d all be. I would, too, if it weren’t so powerfully funny. I’d pity the cow I’d try to milk.”
“What reason have you for thinking this girl, Geraldine, will be such a snob?” Gertrude asked as she resumed her sewing.
“Reason enough!” Merry told them. “Alfred said that his sister was very angry when she heard that her father was going to send her to such a ‘back-woodsy’ place, meaning our village, and she declared that she simply would not go. She, Geraldine Morrison, who was used to having four servants wait upon her, to live in an old country house where she would probably have to demean herself by making her own bed? No, never! She raged and stormed, Alfred said, and declared that she would go to visit some cousins in New York, but to that her father would not listen. He told her that he wanted his little girl, who is none too robust, to spend a winter breathing the country air in the village where he was a boy. Of course, since Geraldine is only sixteen, she had to give in, and so next week she is to arrive, bag and baggage. She told Alfred that he needn’t think for one moment that she was going to hobnob with silly, simpering country milkmaids! Alfred said that he hated to tell Jack all this, but he liked us so much he wanted us to be prepared, so that we would not be hurt by his sister’s rudeness.”
There were twinkles appearing in the eyes of the mischievous Peggy. “Oh, girls,” she said gaily, “I’ve thought up the best joke to play on this haughty young lady who calls us simpering milkmaids. Let’s pretend that is what we really are, and let’s call on her and act the part. We’re all crazy about private theatricals. Here’s our chance.”
“Say, but that’s a keen idea!” Merry agreed chucklingly.
Then they chattered merrily as they laid their plans. They would give the new girl a few days to become used to
