Nettie took her off into the next room where there was much whispering for the next few minutes. “I shall get something for mother,” Nettie explained. “I don’t know exactly what but I will find out what she needs the most.”
“I think that is a perfectly lovely plan,” agreed Edna. “Now I must go back and tell Ben, for he will want to know. You come up this afternoon, Nettie, won’t you?”
Nettie promised, and after Edna had gone she said to her mother, “Mother, I think I will spend part of my money on a birthday gift for Edna. It was all her doings about the puzzle and I would like to have her have something I could buy with the money. Will you help me?”
“Indeed I will, my dear, and I think that is an excellent plan.”
So Nettie had her two secrets and in time both gifts were given.
Her meeting was an interesting one. The girls always liked the old attic and it was seldom that a meeting there did not turn out to be one which was thoroughly enjoyed. The refreshments received even more praise than Edna had predicted, for not a crumb of gingerbread, not a single maple-sugar cream, nor a drop of raspberry shrub was left, and the honorary member went home in an exalted frame of mind.
On the very evening of this meeting, while Edna was looking over her favorite page of her father’s paper, she heard him say to his wife. “Humph. That was a bad failure of Green and Adams to-day. Adams was a pretty high-flyer, and a good many of the men on the ’Change have been prophesying this crash.”
“What Adams is that?” asked Mrs. Conway.
“Oliver Adams. He lives on the square, you know, in that large white house with the lions in front.”
Edna pricked up her ears. “Is it Clara Adams’s father?” she asked.