“Sure thing.” Merry reached for her garment. “Our fingers can sew for the orphans while our tongues can unravel mysteries if—” her eyes were twinkling as they turned inquiringly toward Peggy Pierce, “our committee of two has unearthed one as yet.”
“Of course we haven’t!” was the maiden’s indignant response. “How could we find a mystery in a snow-storm like this?”
“True enough!” Merry said in a more conciliatory tone. “I really had not expected you to.”
“In truth,” Rose, curled in the big easy chair near the fire, put in teasingly, “for that matter, we don’t expect a real mystery to be unearthed in this little sound-asleep town of Sunnyside. Goodness, don’t we know everybody in it, and don’t our parents know their parents and their grandparents and——”
“Well, somebody new might come to town,” Doris, the second member of the sleuth committee, remarked hopefully.
“Sure thing, someone might,” Merry said with such emphasis on the last word that Bertha dropped her work on her lap to comment: “You speak as though you knew that someone new is coming.”
“I do!” Merry replied calmly, bending over her sewing that the girls might not see how eager she was to tell them her news.
“Stop being so tantalizing, Merry! What in the world do you know today that you didn’t know Saturday?” Peg inquired.
“Oh, I know, I know!” Rose sang out. “It’s something that handsome boy, Alfred Morrison, told you when he went to call on Jack. Out with it, Merry; don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Of course! How stupid we didn’t think to ask what happened after you and Alfred Morrison had left us at our homes,” Doris put in. “We knew he was going with you to call on Jack. Is he coming to live in Sunnyside? Say, wouldn’t it be keen if he did?”