A tall, angular woman, wearing a man’s coat and hat, appeared from a barn carrying a basket of eggs. The girls climbed from the sleigh and walked toward her. “Peg, suppose you do the talking this time,” Merry suggested, “but use diplomacy. Don’t plunge right in.”
“No, thanks!” That maid shook her head vehemently. “It’s up to you, Merry.”
And so their president advanced with her friendliest smile. “Mrs. Ingersol?”
The woman, without a visible change of features, acknowledged that to be her name, and so Merry said: “We would like to buy a couple of chickens of about two or three pounds each.” This surely sounded innocent enough. The woman was most business-like. To the surprise of the girls, she took from her coat pocket a whistle and blew upon it a shrill blast. Instantly, or almost so, a long, lank youth appeared out of a nearby chicken yard and called, “What yo’ want, Ma?”
“Two threes fixed,” was the terse reply. Then to the girls: “Come along in and get yerselves warm. Beastly cold winter we’ve been havin’, tho’ it’s let up a spell.”
The girls followed the woman into a large, clean kitchen. A fire snapped and crackled in the big wood stove. There was a long wood box near it which served as a window seat, and four of the girls ranged along on it, the others sat on white pine chairs, stiff and just alike.
The woman eyed them with an expression which revealed neither interest nor curiosity as to who they were. The girls found it harder to ask questions of this adamant sort of a creature than they had of Myra Comely. But she it was who broke the ice by asking, “Do you all live in Sunnyside?”
Merry nodded, smiling her brightest. “Yes, we’re all from town.” Then she hurried to take advantage of the opening. “Have you been here long, Mrs. Ingersol?”
“Yep, born clost to here. Never been out’n the state in my life. Hep, my son, he-uns was born here and ain’t so much as been out o’ the county. Don’t reckon he’s like to, as he’s set on marryin’ a gal down the road a piece.”
The woman turned abruptly and went through a door. The girls looked at each other tragically. “That didn’t take long, but, alas and alak for us, no clues!”