CHAPTER XV
ORCHIDIA
"Oh, how perfectly gorgeous!" This a solo from Grace.
"Heavenly, I think!" Cleo chimed in.
"Wherever did you get them all?" asked Grace.
Like a little floral queen, Mary ushered her visitors into this mysterious room, the orchid sanctum of Professor Benson. It was all that the girls had proclaimed it, gorgeous, heavenly and wonderful! The variegated tones of lavendar, known only as orchid, were as elusive as the subtle scent of this tropical bloom. The whole diffusing into something so indescribable that even the spontaneous girls failed for once to rally immediately to a sense of reality. It seemed like a dream, like a picture book, or even a wonderful pastel!
Never before had Mary's quaint personality seemed so well set as she flitted about, bringing her face down to the affectionate shade of flower upon flower, yet never touching with so much as a finger tip the perishable bloom.
The room was, or always had been, a conservatory—the original owner, the famous artist Imlay, delighting in bringing to perfection there the many rare plants and flowers. So the place lent itself exactly to the work of Professor Benson. Many of the orchids hung in leafy baskets, seemingly not requiring soil, but subsisting, as they so peculiarly do, almost in air.
"What are they all for?" stammered Grace.
"Girls, I wish I could tell you all about our orchids, but you see——"
Mary hesitated, put her finger to her lips and her eyes went blank.
"I am sure you will soon, Mary-love," Cleo assisted the perplexed child, "and we wouldn't want to know anything of your affairs that you are not at liberty to tell. Whenever we ask a question that is out of order, as we say at our scout meetings, just you answer 'secret' and we will at once change the subject. There, isn't that fair?"
"You are all so fair and thoughtful," Mary replied. "I just feel I can hardly wait to see Grandie, and get his permission to tell you at least a part of our story. But now let me show you some of our rarest orchids. Come over here and see these growing on the side of this rubber tree."
Time passed quickly in such delightful surroundings, and when Cleo glanced at her wrist watch she discovered two hours had been consumed in the time since leaving home, and Jennie should not be made anxious, they had subsequently decided. Consequently the orchid room could not longer be enjoyed on this first visit.
"You see, the wires Grandie uses to give a very light heat," Mary explained. "He is working on a new electric system, and had just turned the current on to try it last night. It is off now. I know how to throw on and off the switch," she assured the girls, as Madaline edged gingerly from the room.
"Don't be afraid, Madie," said Grace. "The wires are now all as dead as fish hooks, and much less dangerous."
"What do you suppose the strange men intended to do?" ventured Cleo.
"Just say 'secret' if I am on the wrong track."
"Oh, I know they meant to harm Grandie," replied Mary, soberly. "They pretended, I suppose, that they came to buy orchids, but more likely they came to steal them. Then Janos is always wanting Grandie to take his old queer medicines, and I know they do not make him better. But do come along, girls, they really might be daring enough to come back."
At this Grace and Madaline made a bee-line for the front door, which stood safely wide open. Cleo remained back with Mary, who was most particular about spraying a few precious plants with water from an atomizer before she left.
"No danger of those men coming back to Bellaire by train," said Cleo, as Mary finally sprang the lock on the big door, "but, of course, they might come by auto," she added.
"I heard Janos say he could not get a license to drive a car," Mary said, "and I was glad of that. You see, these foreigners know very little about machinery."
"But they could hire a driver," suggested Grace.
"They would not," Mary insisted, shaking her head. "They are too secretive, and would be afraid others would find them out. Oh dear," and she sighed deeply. "I do not see why we have to suffer so. I have been so happy with you girls I can almost forget, but when I come up here it all rushes back!"
"Now—now, now," warned Grace in her boyish way. "No fair getting glumpy. You are just exactly like a perfectly different girl, Mary-love. We do not intend to let you do any back-sliding. You can learn that much scouting right off, and I think, Cleo, as soon as we get back home we will make her—yes, make her," and she raised her voice in mock severity, "take our scout pledge of good cheer."
Mary smiled through misty eyes. All three scouts had attempted to take one of her arms, and as she really had not enough members to go around that way, Madaline grabbed the ends of her big long braids, and declared she just had to hold on to something.
They tramped along, down the broad path and again out into the roadway from the once famous artist's estate.
"You have neighbors within call, should yon have needed them, Mary,"
Cleo said. "I am glad you were not too lonely before we met you."
"Yes, but I have never known the folks who live in that house," she replied, drawing in her lips to a very thin red line. "I heard one of the maids make a remark about us one day, and I never wanted to know any of them after that."
"I don't blame you," agreed Madaline. "Mean maids are so mean, and lovely ones are as nice as Jennie, and she's perfect. I hope she won't mind us coming up here?" a little anxiously.
"As long as we are getting back in such good time I am sure she won't,"
Cleo assured them.
"You know, girls," said Mary, stopping suddenly to better gain their entire attention, "I did not forget to bring some flowers back. I am sure Mrs. Dunbar would have loved them, and I should have so enjoyed giving her some, but I promised Grandie never to bring any through the streets. He is so queer about them, you see," and once more the secret topic was inadvertently touched upon. "I may have all I like always," she hurried to explain, "in fact I have many named, and they are my very own, but just yet I would not risk letting people know we have them."
"Oh," said Grace so simply, and so softly that the expression might have been an echo from the sigh of a passing summer breeze.
"But the queer wild bushes and things all growing around the windows?" asked Madaline. "Why do you have them near the glorious orchids?"
"Grandie thinks they are a protector. You can only see them when you look in through the glass, and so no one would ever guess they really hide orchids," Mary explained.
"And that is why you get all the wild roots from the fields?" Grace exclaimed, delighted to have solved that much of the mystery.
"Yes, that is partly the reason, but Grandie makes a fine fertilizer out of the roots, also. You see our beauties are very tender, and must have special heat and special nourishment."
"And how will you know your house is safe while you are away?" pressed
Cleo.
"Of course we don't know," Mary replied, "but there wasn't anything else to do. I feel you girls have done it all. I have been such a baby and, as Reda always insisted, I have seemed half asleep. But honestly, girls," and again Mary pulled them up to a standstill in their walk, so that her remarks would not possibly go astray. "I am like someone who really was asleep, and was just waking up. At least that is the way I feel."
"And you are getting such a lovely color," Grace complimented. "Even if things did get stolen from your house for want of caretakers it seems to me worth while for you and the professor to grow strong," declared the practical little scout.
"It is, indeed," agreed Mary. "You really can't know how much it means just yet. Secret!" she called out, inaugurating Cleo's idea of avoiding the forbidden topic by giving the cry of warning.
They all joined in the laugh that followed, and when they took to the road that slanted down over Second Mountain like an inclined pole, they trotted along, almost running down the steep grade.
"We ought to have brakes to go down here safely," said Cleo. "But I do love to run down a big, high hill. Let's!"
"I'll race you," challenged Madaline, and the words were no more than uttered when the four girls dashed off, throwing back shoulders and bracing heads high to avoid rolling "head over heels" down the steep mountain road.
Past the vineyard, past the quarry pole, and still on past the mountain house, they kept up the uncertain pace, and finally, reaching a smooth, almost level lawn, that stole out to play on the roadside, they all flopped down so suddenly and so unceremoniously that they all but rolled in sheer disregard of possible grown-up dignity.
Recovering their equilibrium, the quartette at once set to their popular lawn-loved task of searching for four-leaf clovers. So intent were they in the hunt they did not observe the approach of two maids, coming towards them from the house they sat directly in front of. But they heard them presently!
"I know it's that queer old gypsy that comes over the mountain every day," said one. "I told Officer Brennen if he wanted to get her—he might stop in here."
At that remark the girls paused in their hunt, and listened intently.
"Hush!" said the other maid. "There's the little girl now with those visitors at Cragsnook."
Mary dropped all her clovers as if they suddenly burned her fingers.
Her face flushed deeply.
"Come on, girls!" said Cleo, aloud. "We are all rested enough now, I guess," and it was a much sobered group that again picked up the trail down the mountain into Bellaire Center.