"You won't say anything to Eleanor, will you?" said Jack to her sisters. "It is a family secret, remember. Of course I shall tell mother and Jean as soon as I see them. I suppose I ought to have told them before, for it isn't nice to have even one secret from your bestest mother and your own twin."
"Yes, you must tell them," agreed her sisters, Mary Lee adding, "Mother was the only one I told when I had my secret, and she never so much as hinted it to any one."
Jack sighed. "I think we'd better be getting back to those two pretty soon, and I don't care how soon we sail for the States." Her sisters understood that she could not reach California too soon, and that she would not mind in the least a little delay there before starting for her own home.
"You'll not tell Eleanor," she repeated.
"Oh, no," promised the others, "but we cannot help her forming her own conclusions."
What these conclusions were, Mary Lee found out that very evening when Eleanor enticed her off into the garden. "I have tried to pump Neal," she said, "but he is mute as a clam, and I can get nothing from him but that he has no right to poach on another's preserves."
"He knows there is no other and that there is a free way to the preserves," Mary Lee told her.
"What do you mean?" cried Eleanor.
"Jack has taken it upon her contrary little self to inform him that nobody has any claim on Nan."