“I’m mad at David,” objected Mary Louise. “He certainly made me furious last night.”
“What did he do?”
Mary Louise frowned, but she did not tell Jane what the young man had said about Cliff Hunter. No use getting her chum all excited, so she merely shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, just some remarks he made,” she replied. “But I really had forgotten all about the date. When did I promise him?”
“Yesterday afternoon, before I went off with Cliff. Oh, come on, Mary Lou! Go along with us. Let’s pack a supper—it’ll be easy with all that food we brought back from the store. Maybe your mother and Freckles will go along.”
“No, I really can’t, Jane. I don’t want to be rude to you—you are my guest, I know—but honest, this is important. That I go see old Mr. Adams, I mean. If he has made up his mind to burn down the entire settlement at Shady Nook, our cottage will be included. I’ve just got to do something to save it—and everybody else’s. You know—Dad’s counting on me!”
“Yes, I understand how you feel, Mary Lou. But you may be all wrong—these two fires may just have been accidents—and then you’ll be wasting your perfectly good vacation for nothing.”
“Oh, but I’m having fun! There’s nothing I love better than a mystery. Only this one does scare me a little, because we may actually be involved in it.”
“Well, you do whatever you want,” Jane told her. “Just regard me as one of the family, and I’ll go my own way. I know everybody here now, and I’m having a grand time. Only don’t forget you have David McCall to reckon with about breaking that date!”
They drove up to the back door of the cottage, and Freckles, who had returned home by this time, helped carry in the boxes. Mary Louise asked him how he had made out with the Flicks.