Jack had leaped to his feet when he saw the merry faces of the five girls in the hall, but before he could join them, they had darted out through the storm porch, and the wind slammed the door after them.
The boy laughed to himself, then shrugged his shoulders as though he was thinking that the modern girl was beyond his comprehension. Then he returned to the fireplace, dropped down into the comfortable depths of a big easy chair and continued to read and scribble alternately. He was preparing a paper to be read that night before the secret society to which he belonged: The C. D. C. The boys had long ago guessed the meaning of the letters that named the girls’ club “The S. S. C.”
“Dead easy!” Bob Angel had told them. “Sunny Side Club, of course.” But the girls had never been able to guess the meaning of the boys’ “C. D. C.,” nor did they know where the secret meetings were held. These meetings were always at night, and, although Sunnyside girls were modern as far as their conversation went; due to their parents’ antiquaited ideas, perhaps, they were not considered old enough to roam about the dark streets of the town at night unless accompanied by their brothers or someone older. And, of course, they couldn’t find out the secret meeting-place of the boys when the members were along, and so up to that particular date, January 11, 1928, the seven “S. S. C.” girls had not even a suspicion of where the boys’ clubrooms were located.
They had vowed that they would ferrit it out if it took a lifetime.
CHAPTER III.
A MERRY ADVENTURE
The snow-plough had been along on the wide street and sidewalks of the main thoroughfares of the town and the girls had no trouble at all in making headway through the residential and business parts of Sunnyside, but when they turned toward the hills, on the west side of the village, they found that the snow-ploughs had not been so accommodating. Willowbend Lane was covered with deep, soft snow and when Bertha Angel, who chanced to be in the lead, tried to stand on it, she sank down to her knees. Wading was out of the question. Willowbend Lane was on the outskirts of town and it was fully a mile back to the main road. They looked ahead of them across the unbroken snow to where, on a low hill, stood the big brownstone, turreted house in which lived the wealthy Mrs. Irving Earle Wright and her daughter, Rosamond.
[“I wish we’d brought along some snowshoes,” Merry remarked.] “I hate to let a storm stump me. Brother will certainly tease us well if we go back without having reached our destination.”
“I don’t think snowshoes would have helped us much,” Bertha Angel commented. “It’s quite a feat to walk on them until one gets on to the trick of it.”
“Hark ye!” Merry exclaimed, lifting a finger of her fur-lined glove. “I hear sleigh bells! Somebody is coming, and if that somebody’s destination happens to be up Willowbend Lane, we’ll beg a ride.”
“What if it’s somebody we don’t know?” little Betty Byrd ventured to inquire, to which Merry “How could it be? Wasn’t I born here, and don’t I know everybody within a million miles?”