"You'll hear all about it," Penny promised eagerly. "But let's wait until we're away from the cottage."
"Even the walls have ears?" laughed Susan.
"No, but our housekeeper has," Penny replied.
The girls soon left the cottage, walking down by the ravine where they would be alone. Penny told her chum everything that had happened since she and her father had arrived at Kendon. Susan did not feel that her friend had placed an imaginative interpretation upon any of the events.
"I'm glad you're in sympathy with me," Penny laughed. "I'm hoping that together we may be able to help little Perry Crocker. And incidentally, we might stumble into a mystery which would rival Dad's toy lantern case."
"You know I want to help," said Susan eagerly. "But I'm an awful dub. I never have any ideas."
"I'm a little short of them myself just now," Penny admitted. "But first we'll go down to the Crocker place. I'm anxious for you to meet the main characters of our melodrama."
"I think I noticed the house on the way up the hill," Susan replied. "Is it that ancient, vine-covered mansion?"
"Yes, Mrs. Masterbrook told me Old Herman moved in there after his sister died. He used to live in this cottage."
"And where is this young man named Michael Haymond?"