“The voice must have been carried from somewhere,” Horace concluded. “It could have been a trick of the wind, like the talking tree.”
“Is that what you think it was?” asked Judy. “I don’t see how a trick of the wind could make a tree talk, do you, Peter?”
“If the trees I saw today could have talked,” he replied, “they would have all screamed, ‘Save us!’ We did our best, but it was the rain that finally put the fire out, after the wind changed.”
“That was just about the time those men stopped here, wasn’t it, Judy?” asked Honey.
“What men?” asked Peter. “I still don’t get it.”
“No wonder,” Judy told him. “We took the sign down and hid it behind the door. Here it is,” she added, dragging it out. “You might call it Exhibit A. Isn’t it a beauty? Honey lettered it herself.”
“Tourists Welcome,” he read aloud, the puzzled frown on his forehead deepening. “What was the idea?” he questioned. “Are we suddenly in the tourist business?”
“I’m afraid we were,” Judy admitted, “and we’re also deep in another mystery.”
Eagerly the children began telling him about it, but their mother stopped their chatter by offering them some of the soup Judy was dishing out, and telling them to keep quiet while they ate it.
“Don’t dish out any for us, Judy,” Horace told her. “I promised Honey I’d take her out to dinner, and I mean to keep my word if all the restaurants aren’t closed—”