“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.