Penny shook her head. “I’m sticking until I find out what’s going on here,” she announced. “It might mean a story for Dad’s paper!”
“Oh, that’s only your excuse,” Louise teased. “You know you never could resist a mystery, and this one certainly has baffling angles.”
The girls washed in a basin of cold water and then went downstairs. Mrs. Lear was baking pancakes in the warm kitchen. She flipped one neatly as she reached with the other hand to remove the coffee pot from the stove.
“Good morning,” she chirped. “Did you sleep right last night?”
Penny and Louise agreed that they had and edged close to the stove for warmth. An old-fashioned clock on the mantel showed that it was only eight o’clock. But eight o’clock for Mrs. Lear was a late hour, judging by the amount of work she had done. A row of glass jars stood on the table, filled with canned plums and peaches.
“You haven’t put up all that fruit this morning?” gasped Louise.
Mrs. Lear admitted that she had. “But that ain’t much,” she added modestly. “Only a bushel and a half. Won’t hardly last no time at all.”
Mrs. Lear cleared off the kitchen table, set it in a twinkling, and placed before the girls a huge mound of stacked cakes.
“Now eat hearty,” she advised. “I had mine hours ago.”
As Penny ate, she sought to draw a little information from the eccentric old woman. Deliberately, she brought up the subject of the Burmaster family.