Virginia, who had never before seen a rustic garden house, was much interested and she stopped at the open door. Megsy, Sally and Babs were with her. A rustic table with four chairs made of small trees with the bark on were within.
“Isn’t it fun to think pictures?” the romantic Sally remarked. “Can’t you fancy the Lady Burgess, her daughters and friends all dressed in the pretty styles of long ago as they sat about that table drinking tea?”
Margaret nodded. “I can see them, too,” she agreed, “and there’s a gentleman wearing a bottle green broadcloth coat with gilt buttons and knee breeches. At least that was what my grandfather wore. He is standing up behind the ladies and passing the tea.”
Virginia smiled. “And yet you won’t either of you try to write a story for the Manuscript Magazine.” Then turning away, she inquired: “Why, where is Betsy? She isn’t with us.”
That would-be young detective had not cared to linger at an open summer house, which she was sure contained no mystery (for, could not one see all that was in it at a glance?) and so she had skipped ahead. They soon found her standing in the drive gazing as one fascinated at an upper window in a big, rambling old Colonial house.
“What are you looking at so steadily?” Virginia asked. She, too, glanced up. The windows were covered with heavy green blinds and the front door was boarded up.
“I’m not so sure that the old place is deserted,” Betsy said in a low voice as the girls gathered close about her. “I was positive a moment ago that I saw that upper left blind open a little, but now it seems to be fastened as securely as before.”
“Betsy, you, too, must be unusually imaginative today,” Margaret declared. “If anyone were living here, why should the house be boarded up?”
“I suggest that we walk around the place,” Barbara, who liked mysteries almost as much as Betsy, suggested.
This they did, but the right side of the house was so bleak as the front had been. Babs was first around the corner and she beckoned to the others. “Look!” she cried. “An old-fashioned cellar door, just the kind my grandfather had. How I adored sliding down it when I was very small. See, this one is covered with ice. Watch me while I return to my childhood sport.”