“Skeered, little one?” the older girl smiled down at her.
“Well, sort of,” the younger girl confessed. “This is where that old man was robbed, and——”
“O, fudge,” Peg sang out. “Forget it! That was the first holdup that ever occurred around here, and probably will be the last.”
“Where is the Welsley farm?” Geraldine inquired after a time.
“Beyond that tall pine-tree hedge,” Merry indicated with a wave of her fur-lined glove. “You’ll see the crumbling cupulo in a second.”
The girls gazed intently at the little they could see of the house as they passed the long high hedge.
“I don’t believe the boys come way out here for their meetings,” Bertha, the sensible, remarked when they had turned into the old Dorchester road.
“In fact, I don’t believe they could, much of the time, because of the snow drifts. I think if we want to find where their clubrooms are, we’ll have to look somewhere nearer home.”
A moment later Peg called: “There it is! See the name on that signboard, ‘The Ingersol Chicken Farm,’ and under it, ‘Jams and jellies a specialty.’”
They turned in at a wide gate in the picket fence and found themselves in a large dooryard in front of a substantially built white farmhouse. In the back was an orchard and long rows of berry bushes and at the side were many chicken runs wired in.