That afternoon, after school, when the four friends assembled in the carriage shed for their usual spin home in Billie’s motor car, they found a note stuck conspicuously between the cushion and the back of the seat. It was addressed in a large angular hand to “Miss Wilhelmina Campbell and her friends, both boys and girls, especially Miss Butler,” and inside it read:
“Keep quiet about Boulder Lane. You are watched and if you let a word slip out, the punishment will come quickly.”
“How ridiculous,” exclaimed Billie angrily, when she had shown the note to the others. “I have a great mind to write papa all about it, only it would worry him to death. It is only cowards who write anonymous letters, anyhow.”
But she did not write to her father, and the other girls, too, were silent on the matter.
They wondered many times who had put the note on the seat. Strangers were not unusual in West Haven, where sailors and seamen often came ashore, but the Girls’ High School was at the other end of town and visitors ashore seldom strayed so far away from the shops and the little theatre.
“I’d like to know what their grudge is against the Butler family,” Elinor had demanded, but no one could answer the question, and she was still determined not to disturb her highly excitable father.
CHAPTER V.—THE FIRST MOTOR PICNIC.
One Saturday morning early in September Miss Helen Campbell gave a breakfast party to her four favorite Blue Birds. It was to be the beginning of an eventful day for the young girls, three of whom were to take their first long motor trip, and, furthermore, the motor party was to end with a visit to Shell Island, where this excited and happy company of young people were to spend the night, motoring back to West Haven next day.
Miss Campbell herself was excited.
“It’s a novelty for me, my dears,” she exclaimed, beaming on her guests from behind the silver urn at the head of the breakfast table. “I’m a very dull, lonesome old woman, and having this nice child here with me is going to wake me into life again. I shall never be able to give you up, Wilhelmina. You had better write your father that you have been adopted by a very obstinate old party, who believes that possession is nine points of the law.”