When the girls were again in the sleigh, they told Danny to race for town. They were to attend the weekly meeting at Peg’s house and they had wonderful news to tell.
In a remarkably short time they reached there and found the others assembled. “Girls,” Doris burst out before she had removed her outdoor wraps. “The mystery is solved! Myra Comely, I mean the mother, is the one we wanted. And now that she may go back to her Arizona home and won’t have to take in washing any more, she will get well, I am sure, just ever so soon. Myra is going to send a telegram at once to her uncle, and I know that he will send money to them for the journey.”
“Now all of the mysteries are solved except where the boys have their clubroom,” Peg began, when Bertha laughingly told them that that even wasn’t a mystery any longer.
“How come?” Peg asked.
“Well, last night Mother wanted a yeast cake from the store just before bedtime that she might put some dough to rise. Dad had gone to lodge and Bob had left early with the boys, so I took a lantern and went to the store. I had a key to the side door and I went in. At first I was very much startled to see a light coming through cracks in the floor of a storeroom over the back part. One has to go up a ladder on the side wall and then crawl through a trapdoor to get to it. I was just wondering why thieves would want to go up there where Dad keeps hardware supplies and things like that, when I heard a laugh, and I knew it was Bob. Then I realized that I had stumbled on the secret meeting place of the ‘C. D. C.’”
“Well, that’s a much more sensible place than the old Welsley ruin would be,” Merry commented.
Having removed their wraps, they all sat about the cosy fire and Peg passed around the garments they were making for the orphans.
“There’s one thing sure, the solving of our mystery spread sunshine all right, and so we lived up to our first motto without really meaning to,” Merry commented.
Peg inquired: “Did you hear anything that the boys were talking about?”
“I tried not to,” Bertha said. “I went at once to the front of the store and got my yeast cake, but, just as I was stealing back out again, so that they wouldn’t hear me, I heard Bob say: ‘Four o’clock Saturday. That’s tomorrow! Surprise the girls.’”