“O dear, how stupid of me!” laughed Adele. “Of course I hadn’t told you about it, had I? Well, you know that we wanted a place in which to hold our club-meetings, and I said I had thought of one if we might have it.” The six nodded eagerly.
“Well, then, we may, and it’s the loveliest, idealest place for a Secret Sanctum that ever could be thought of.”
“Oh, Adele, do tell us where it is,” begged Peggy Pierce. “I am ’most consumed with curiosity.”
“Well, then, I will end your suspense by telling you that it is the log cabin over in Buttercup Meadows. It belongs to my dad, and he is glad to let us have it, and so is mumsie.”
“Ohee!” squealed Betty Burd. “How I do wish that there was no school to-day, so that we might go right over to look at our newest possession.”
“Let’s go at three!” exclaimed Adele; “that is, if our nice mothers do not need us after school.”
The mothers not only did not need them, but one and all were glad to have their daughters out of doors as much as possible in the pleasant spring weather, and so, as soon as the afternoon session was over, the seven maidens went hippety-skipping across the brown meadows.
Adele was armed with a good-sized key, which was rusty with age, but which proved that its days of usefulness were not over, for, when it was slipped in the padlock, it turned with a creak and the door swung open.
As first it was so dark within that they could see nothing, but soon their eyes, becoming accustomed to the dimness, noted several objects about.
“Oh, do look!” cried Doris Drexel in delight. “Here is rustic furniture which must have been made by the sheep-herders many years ago.”