“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.”