“Not a fraction of a second, have we, Alf?” he turned to his companion for corroboration. “All I heard is just what you were saying last night, that you are going to give a party for the orphans on Valentine’s day.”
The girls looked still unconvinced, and so Alfred leaped into the breach with, “Here’s proof sufficient, I should think.” He held out his coat sleeve, on which there were frosty snow stars as yet unmelted. “If we’d been long in the house, they would be dewdrops. Is it not so?”
“Verily.” Peg seemed relieved, as did the others, but when the boys had gone into Jack’s study, which adjoined the library, the girls were puzzled to hear laughter that the boys were evidently trying to muffle. Merry put a warning finger on her lips, which meant that they would postpone further discussion until another day.
CHAPTER XX.
THE SLEUTHS SLEUTHING
“Isn’t it keen that we have this whole Friday afternoon off?” Peg pirouetted about on the snowy road in front of the girls. “Now we can carry out all of our plans before dark, if——” She hesitated and Doris continued with: “‘If’—the biggest word in the language. If we can beg, borrow or hire a cutter large enough to take us all out the East Lake Road. Bertha, you’ll have to drive, being our expert horsewoman.”
The girls had lunched at the school and were trooping townwards, having been excused for the afternoon, as none of them happened to be in a play which was to be rehearsed from two to four.
“Here’s another if,” Rose put in. “If the snow wasn’t so deep on the Lake Road, we might all pile in my runabout. I can drive it as skillfully as Bertha can drive her father’s horses.”
“But there is snow on the roads as soon as you leave town,” Geraldine contributed. “The snow plough hasn’t even reached as far as the Wainright home.”
“Well, let’s go to the Angel grocery first and see if a delivery sleigh can be borrowed, and if not, why then maybe I can inveigle my papa-dear to loan me one of his,” Peg suggested.
This plan was followed, and fifteen minutes later the girls were seated on the bottom of a box sleigh with Bertha and Merry up on the driver’s seat. “Dad needs this fashionable turnout by five o’clock,” Bertha said as she urged the big dapple-grey horse to its briskest trot. “Now, first we are to stop at the Drexels and get the bundle of laundry, I believe.” The driver glanced over her shoulder and Doris nodded in the affirmative. “It’s all done up and waiting.”