irritably. She stooped to rub a scraped place on her ankle.
“Gee, I’m sorry, Jo. I guess I just didn’t realize how bad this path would seem to someone who’s not used to it. It’s as safe as can be, really. What’s the matter with your leg?”
“Nothing’s the matter with it,” she snapped, “I skinned my ankle on your safe old trail.” Jo was not going to be placated so easily.
“You were barreling along at quite a pace, Dick,” Patty admonished gently. “We’re here for the summer—at least, we wanted to be. Now, I wonder if we’ll last.”
“Forgive me, both of you, for being so stupid.” He really looked crestfallen, for he had planned on a summer of fun with the girls and here he was spoiling things already.
“My, what a honey of a lake!” exclaimed Jo, suddenly willing to forget her injured ankle and pride. Below the scrub pine a clear green lake shimmered in the bright sunlight. The water gently lapped at the rim of the shore. Clean white sand extended perhaps twenty feet back from the water, forming a kind of frame. It was, indeed, enough to make one forget a petty squabble.
“It’s even nicer to swim in,” Dick replied. “If you’re rested now, we can go down and you’ll see for yourselves.”
This time Dick carefully took each girl by the hand and helped them over the bumpy stretches of the path. In a few minutes they reached the bottom of the cliff where Dick showed them the dressing shacks tucked underneath the cliff to one side. Since few of the summer visitors had yet arrived, the three young people had the beach to themselves.
Not much time passed before Patty and Jo emerged from one of the dressing rooms, clad in their swim suits. Jo’s suit was turquoise blue while Pat’s was coral, making an attractive combination.
“Humph, I thought twins always dressed alike,” was Dick’s only comment.
“That’s old stuff,” sniffed Patty. Then she laughed and Dick relented by giving her an approving whistle.
Seizing each girl by an arm, Dick pulled them giggling into the water. “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a girl who dilly-dallies around before getting into the water. I had to make sure you wouldn’t.”
Two white caps bobbed up out of the water to hear this outburst. “You needn’t have worried,” Pat said merrily. “We love to swim. How deep does it get?”
“Oh, it’s about forty feet deep in some parts, but that’s way out in the middle. Have no fears, though, there’s a mighty competent lifeguard on duty all season. It so happens that that’s me—mornings, anyway. You’re quite safe.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jo answered him quickly, remembering the journey down the cliff.
“Is that a float I see out there?” Pat interrupted. “Come on, I’ll race you for it!”
Dick sat swinging his legs from the platform as Pat pulled herself up, dripping, beside him. Jo finished a close third in the race, taking the loss with good grace. “I’m just a little rusty, I guess. You wait, Mr. Prentiss, until I regain my form and then I’ll give you something to grin about.”
“I don’t doubt it for an instant, Miss Faraday.”
“What are you two being so formal about? Jo’s not kidding, though, usually she beats me.”
“Say, your lips are getting a little blue, Pat. You’ve had enough for today. I promised Mavis that I’d only allow you a little swim.”
“I guess it is colder than I thought. It’s the wind that makes it that way. Golly,” another thought suddenly struck her. “Mavis is a peach, isn’t she?”
“Best there is,” Dick said lightly as he dove expertly into the water. “Coming?”
“We’re really a couple of lucky kids, do you know that, Pat?” Jo, too, became suddenly serious. She stared down into the glistening water for another moment in silence. “To have one set of wonderful parents is something to be thankful for, but to have two sets—we must be leading charmed lives.” With that she followed Dick into the water and swam slowly back to shore.
2 Making New Friends
YOU REALLY ought to have another pair of warm slacks,” Mavis remarked the following morning, as she helped the twins unpack their luggage. “My goodness, what is this?” she exclaimed, holding up a large ball of socks tied around the middle with string.
“That’s our head,” Jo explained. Seeing the puzzled look on Mavis’ face, she said, “You know, the mummified one Welty gave us for Christmas last year. We didn’t want it to be smashed.”
“Now I remember. But you can’t blame me for thinking it an odd way to pack socks. Where shall I put it?”
“I’ll take it,” Jo said, holding out her hand. “How I shuddered the first time I saw this on the little table in the living room! To think of some long-dead jungle headhunter prizing this as a sign that he had killed one of his enemies seemed horrible to me. Now I’m rather fond of it.” As she talked Jo carefully untied the string and separated the socks. From this gaily colored nest the shriveled human head seemed to grin incongruously up at her. Smiling to herself she laid it on the top of the chest of drawers.
“It might not be a bad idea to wrap your own head in that fashion, Jo,” Patty called from the closet where she was hanging up blouses. “Conserve what precious little brains you have.”
“Funny thing that so few people can really tell us apart,” Jo remarked to no one in particular. A snort from Pat told her, however, that the remark did not go unnoticed.
“Getting back to the slacks I mentioned, the mornings are cold up here, even in July. One pair apiece will hardly be enough.” Mavis fingered the pair she was arranging on a hanger. “Pat, find me a piece of paper and a pencil, please, and we’ll start making a list of things you need. Welty must have some in his den.”
“These winter things I’ll just pile here on the bed, Mavis. Oh, dear, I wish they hadn’t delivered our trunks so promptly. Here is everything we own all to be stowed away somehow or other.” Jo sighed and picked up another dress from the trunk before her while Pat went in search of paper and pencil.
Tapping gently on the door, Pat went into the study at Welton’s sign of recognition. She knew he didn’t like to be interrupted at work and intended to make her mission as brief as possible. Welton, his wide brow furrowed in concentration, was bending over a large walnut desk.
“Sit down, child, sit down. I’ll be finished here in just a moment,” he said, without raising his eyes.
Patty glanced around the room quickly. Following his orders in this particular case was not easy. To anyone who did not know Duer’s habits it would have seemed impossible for him to think among the confusion that surrounded him. The desk itself was littered with scraps of paper, some of them crumpled, and with boxes of rock specimens, reference books and several stub-ends of pencils. The rest of the room was equally cluttered. In front of the windows stood a chest, equipped with special drawers to hold the samples of his collection. Some of the drawers were pulled far out and left sagging precariously toward the floor; others were pushed in beyond the face of the chest. One whole
