Feeling sure that their mothers could not object, since the strange boy was so well acquainted with Merry’s brother, they swarmed into the luxurious sleigh, sitting three deep, which but added to their gaiety. The horses were obliged to travel slowly through the drifts, but they soon came to a part of the lane where the wind had blown the snow from the road to be caught at the fences, and then they made better time. In a very few moments the sleigh was turning in between two high stone gate posts, as Merry had directed, and shortly thereafter the six girls were tumbling out under a wide sheltering portico. “We’re terribly grateful to you, Mr. Morrison.” Merry exclaimed. “Maybe we’ll be able to pick you up some time when you’re stranded somewhere.”
The boy laughed good-naturedly. “I hope I won’t have that long to wait before I can see you all again.” He included the group in his smiling glance, then, because the spirited horses were restive, he lifted his fur cap and turned his attention toward the prancing span.
Laughingly the girls climbed up the stone steps and were about to ring the bell when the door was thrown open and their “prettiest member,” as Rose was often called, welcomed them effusively.
“Say, but you missed the time of your young life,” Peggy Pierce informed her as the girls removed their overshoes and leggins in the storm vestibule. “Such a handsome boy as we had to drive us up the lane.”
“O, you don’t have to tell me,” Rose laughingly replied. “I was standing in the drawing-room window watching you from the time you appeared at the foot of the lane. If you had turned back, I should have been simply heart-broken. Mother thinks that I have a cold, and she wouldn’t let Tony drive me to town, and, of course, I can’t use my runabout in weather like this.” Then, when cloaks and caps had been removed and they were gathered about the wide fireplace in Rose’s very own sitting-room, that maiden passed around a five-pound box of chocolates to keep the first part of her promise; then she demanded: “Merry Lee, you haven’t told the others your exciting news yet, have you?”
Bertha Angel answered for their president: “Nary an inkling of it. Truth to tell, we didn’t even ask her. I guess we all thought we’d rather wait until the meeting was called.”
“Oh, I say, let’s cut out formality, for once, can’t we?” Peggy Pierce implored. “Why read the minutes of the last meeting when all we did was entertain the little orphans with a big Christmas tree?”
“All?” Gertrude West lifted her eyebrows questioningly. “I believe, if you left it to the orphans, they would tell you that we did a whole lot to add to their Christmas cheer.”
“Sure thing we did, I’ll acknowledge that, but——”
“Come to order, if you please!” the president tapped on the arm of her chair, which was upholstered in rose-colored brocade as were the other chairs and the gilt-framed sofa piled high with silken pillows. “We’ll omit reading the minutes, because we really mustn’t stay long. It gets dark so early this month and we’ll have to wade back through the lane. And we won’t call the roll, because, of course, we know that we’re all here, so, since I believe you are properly curious, I will now tell my news-item. I, Marion Margaret Lee, have discovered the meaning of the letters ‘C. D. C.,’ and, what is mere, I now know what the boys do at their secret meetings.”