But the incident had made Aggie very nervous and she took a second small dose of the cordial. Of this also more later on.
There was a large group of cars in front of the Rectory. The Smith boys had brought their flivver, stripped of everything but the engine and one seat for lightness, and the Cummingses, who are very wealthy, had brought their racer. Tish eyed them both with a certain grimness.
“Not speed, but brains will count, Lizzie,” she said to me. “What does it matter how fast they can go if they don’t know where they’re going?”
After some thought, however, she took off the engine hood and the spare tire and laid them aside, and stood gazing at Aggie, now fast asleep in the rear seat.
“I could leave her too,” she said. “She will be of no help whatever. But on the other hand, she helps to hold the rear springs down when passing over bumps.”
Mrs. Ostermaier then passed around glasses of lemonade, saying that every hunt drank a stirrup cup before it started, and Mr. Ostermaier gave us our envelopes and the first password, which was “Ichthyosaurus.”
It was some time before everyone had memorized it, and Tish utilized the moments to open her envelope and study the clew. The password, as she said, was easy; merely a prehistoric animal. The clew was longer:
“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.
Two twos are four, though some say more, and i-n-k spells ink.”
“Water?” I said. “That must be somewhere by the lake, Tish.”