It was cold out and the door was open. What could the girls do to obtain the needed information? Peg plunged in with, “Which state did you come from, Mrs. Comely?” The girls gasped, but, if the woman thought it a strange question, she made no sign of it. “I was born in a little village on the other side of Dorchester. Your laundry will be delivered on Tuesday, Miss Drexel.”
As the girls were driving away. Peg said: “I suppose it was awful of me to come right out with that question, but we just had to know.”
“O, probably sleuths have to ask questions sometimes, although it’s more clever to get information in a round-about way,” Doris said; then asked: “Bertha, how did Myra Comely happen to know your name?”
“She trades at our store,” was the reply. “Everyone in town, sooner or later, sees me in there helping Dad. I post his books for him.”
Geraldine felt somewhat shocked. To think that she was associating with a girl who sometimes worked in a grocery. The snob in her was not entirely dead, she feared. But she must kill it! How Jack would scorn her if he knew her thoughts.
They were all in the sleigh and the big horse, Dapple, glad to be again on the move, for the air was snappily cold even though the sun was shining, started toward the Lake Road at his merriest pace. Snowballs flew back at the laughing girls from his heels.
“It’s three now!” Bertha glanced at her wrist watch. “Shall we stop at the old ruin before or after we visit the Ingersol farm?”
The opinions being divided, as was their usual custom they permitted the president to decide, and she said wisely that she thought it more important to visit the farm than it was the ruin, and so they would better go there first.
They were glad when they passed the Inn that Mr. Wiggin or his wife were not in evidence. Mr. Wiggin was so garrulous that, if he saw any of the boys in town, he would ask what the girls had been doing out that way alone.
Betty Byrd held fast to Doris as they turned into the side wood road which was a shortcut to the old Dorchester highway.