The Secret of the Mansion (9 page)

have slunk away like that. Anyway, Queenie proved that he really is a coward, so I don’t think any of us would have any trouble scaring him away with a

stick or a stone.”

Honey shivered. “But there was such a mean look in his yellow eyes!”

“That look,” Jim explained, “is really fear. The poor brute probably ran away from someone who treated him cruelly. It’s a funny thing,” he went on. “A

wolf, unless it’s starving and is pretty sure you’re helpless, won’t attack you. But a wild dog that has been ill-treated will, simply because it’s afraid

of being attacked first. I feel sorry for that mongrel,” he added, more to himself than to the girls. “I know what it’s like to run away from someone who

beats you for no reason at all.”

“Oh, gosh, Jim,” Trixie cried impulsively, “I hope your uncle gets well and takes you away from that old Jonesy,”

Jim shrugged. “It doesn’t look as though he will now, but don’t you worry about me. I’ll get along.” He grinned. “And don’t bother to bring me any more

food for a couple of days. I’ve enough to last me for quite a while.” He waved good-by to them from the window as they started down the path.

99 87 “Jim is really wonderful,” Honey said enthusiastically. “I’m not nearly as scared of that dog as I was. I almost feel sorry for the poor thing, myself.”

“Me, too,” Trixie said. “Say, would you like a bike lesson, now, if Mother doesn’t need me?”

“Oh, yes,” Honey cried. “I’m dying to start.”

Trixie found a big, cheerful-looking woman in a stiff white uniform bustling around in the kitchen. “Your little brother’s doing fine,” she told Trixie,

“and your mother is taking a nap. I’m fixing sandwiches and soup for lunch.”

“I’ll help,” Trixie offered.

The nurse laid her hand on Trixie’s shoulder. “No, thank you, dear. You had a dreadful experience yesterday. Run along and have some fun and try to forget

all about it.”

“All right,” Trixie said. “I’ll be out on the driveway if you need me, and please give Bobby my love.” Honey had her first bicycle lesson that morning,

and after a few tumbles she got on very well.

“You’re really doing swell,” Trixie said, watching her pupil admiringly. “I guess all the horseback riding you’ve done has given you a marvelous sense of

balance.”

Honey flushed with pleasure. “Do you think I’m

100 88 good enough to coast down that little slope from the garage?” she asked.

“Sure.” Trixie grinned. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll be coasting down your own driveway in no time.” Honey started at the entrance to the garage and

swept past Trixie, with her light-brown hair flying behind her. “Whee,” she yelled excitedly, “I never had so much fun!”

At that moment, the big laundry truck lumbered into the Belden driveway, and almost simultaneously Honey lost control of the bicycle. It began to weave

from side to side, right in the path of the truck as Trixie shouted, “Steer to the right, Honey. Steer to the right!”

Honey jerked the handlebars violently to one side and crashed to the ground, helplessly tangled between the two wheels. The truck driver slammed on his

brakes

just in time and stopped in a swirl of gravel not two feet from where Honey lay.

“Say, what goes on here?” he demanded crossly as Trixie tried to extricate Honey. “Whyn’t you look where you’re going?”

Trixie ignored him as he strode past them with the bundle, muttering angrily to himself. She helped Honey to her feet. Then she saw the ugly gash on Honey’s

knee.

“Oh, that must hurt,” she cried sympathetically.

101 89 “We’d better go in the house and bathe it and put on some iodine.”

Honey giggled. “My brand new dungarees, torn to shreds.” She stopped suddenly and turned deathly pale. “Oh, oh,” she moaned. “It’s bleeding. I’m going to

faint. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

Trixie remembered, then, how white Honey’s face had been the day before when she saw her sucking blood from Bobby’s toe. With one quick movement, she sat

Honey down on the lawn and pushed her head between her knees.

“You’re all right, Honey,” she said quietly. “You’re not going to faint. just keep your head down. I’ll be right back.” And she raced to the brook to soak

her handker-

chief. Trixie squeezed water on Honey’s wrists and bathed her forehead, and in a little while the color began to come back in Honey’s face and lips.

“I feel better now,” she said with a shaky little laugh. “I’m sorry to be such a sissy, Trixie.”

“You’re not a sissy,” Trixie said staunchly. “You had an awful scare and that’s a nasty cut. If you feel strong enough now, Honey, we’d better go in and

give it a little first aid.”

Honey set her teeth while Trixie bathed the gravel out of the wound and painted it with iodine, but she

102 90 didn’t utter a sound. Mrs. Belden came into the bath-

room then and inspected Honey’s knee. “That’s an ugly gash,” she said. “You’d better stay off the bike until it heals, Honey.”

“Oh, Mrs. Belden,” Honey wailed. “I can’t. I’m just beginning to get the idea, and I’ll have to start all over again if I wait.”

Mrs. Belden smiled and reached up to a box on one of the shelves. “Well,” she said, “keep it bandaged and wear these knee pads for a while. You’re a brave

girl,” she added as she left the room, “to risk bumping that knee again so soon.”

Honey stared at Trixie. “Do you suppose she really meant that?” she gasped. “About my being brave? Or was she just trying to make me feel better?”

Trixie hooted. “Of course she meant it, silly. Moms never says anything she doesn’t mean.”

“Gosh,” Honey breathed. “Golly! Golly! Golly!”

91

An Exploring Trip

Trixie was just finishing her soup and sandwich when the phone rang. It was Honey, breathless with excitement.

“Oh, Trixie, what do you think just arrived by express?”

“A big black snake with a white streak down its back,” Trixie teased, and then she could have bitten off her tongue as she realized from the silence on

the other end of the wire that she had hurt Honey’s feelings. She was relieved after a couple of seconds to hear a giggle.

“No, a bike,” Honey said. “Miss Trask ordered it yesterday when she was in White Plains. It’s a beauty, too, with a big basket and a speedometer and a siren

and a lamp. I’m going to practice all afternoon, so maybe I’ll be good enough by tomorrow to go for a long ride with YOU.”

“Great,” Trixie said. “I bike to the store about a mile away every Sunday morning for the New York papers. We can go right after breakfast if you think

you can make it.”

105 92 “Oh, wonderful,” Honey cried. “Are you going up to you-know-where this afternoon?”

“No,” Trixie told her. “I’ve got to help Mother cultivate the garden. It hasn’t rained in over two weeks, you know, and the ground’s as hard as a brick.

We’ve got to loosen the dirt around the plants and then water them or they’ll die.”

“Can you come up for a swim later?” Honey asked. “I’d love it.” Trixie put the phone back in the cradle and went upstairs to see how Bobby was getting along.

“Hey,” he greeted her in his normal voice. “Did you see that skinny old yellow dog? I saw him out of the window this morning,” he went on, without waiting

for her answer, “and you know what? He caught a rabbit in our rock garden and ate it all up, skin and bones and all!” He grinned.

He’s really awful cute, Trixie thought giving him a quick hug. “How do you feel, Bobby?” she asked.

“I feel fine,” he said cheerfully. “But last night I didn’t. My foot burned all the time just like my finger did that time I forgot to spit on it first

before touching the stove to make it sizzle.”

Trixie laughed. “Hurry up and get well,” she said. “Honey says you can have riding lessons, too, as soon as the doctor says you’re well enough.”

106 93 “Whoopee!” Bobby began to bounce up and down in the bed, and the nurse hurried into the room.

“Quiet! Quiet, young man,” she said severely, and to Trixie, “Your mother’s waiting for you in the garden. Don’t you come around and excite my patient again.”

Then she smiled.

After hoeing for a couple of hours, Trixie thought she just had to get out of the hot sun. “I hate this old vegetable garden,” she muttered crossly to herself.

“I don’t know why Moms is so crazy about it. But if she can stand this heat, I guess I can!”

At that moment, Mrs. Belden drew off her gloves and fanned her face with her big straw hat. “It’s too hot for me, Trixie,” she said, “and your face is the

color of a baby beet. As soon as the sun gets lower in the sky I’ll need you to help me water the plants, but between now and then you may as well get

cooled off up at the lake.”

Trixie dropped her hoe gratefully and raced back to the house for her bathing suit. As she hurried along the path to the Manor House, she saw Honey wheeling

her shiny new bike up the driveway. Honey looked as hot and tired as Trixie felt, but her face was wreathed in smiles as she called out, “I can coast down

our hill now without falling off. Watch me, Trixie. Watch me.”

107 94 Trixie grinned as Honey turned the bike around and started down again. “Why, she’s as excited as Bobby was when he learned to ride his trike,” she

thought. When Honey came back, she said with genuine admiration, “You’re really marvelous. Tomorrow you’ll be going down, no hands, no feet.”

Honey’s hazel eyes glowed, and with her red cheeks and sunburned nose, she didn’t look at all like the pale, sick girl Trixie had met only a short time

before. “The first time I tried it,” she admitted to Trixie, “I was so scared I fell off before I even got started. The second time, I got as far as the

bend in the driveway, and when I saw how far the road was I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. And then, wouldn’t you know it, a delivery truck turned into

our driveway. I was shaking so I was sure I’d steer right into it the way I did at your house, but somehow, I wobbled past with just inches to spare.”

She laughed. “By the time I got to the bottom of the hill I was going so fast I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t turn, so I shot across the road and landed

in the ditch on the other

side.” She patted her sore knee. “It was sure lucky I was wearing these pads your mother lent me.”

“You’re a wonder,” Trixie said as they entered the big white house. “I wish I’d learned to ride a horse as fast as you learned to ride a bike.”

108 95 “But you have, Trixie,” Honey insisted. “Regan thinks you’re terrific.”

“I’ll bet he does,” Trixie said ruefully. “After what happened this morning!”

“He’s not the least bit mad at you,” Honey said with a giggle, “but he gave me the dickens for letting you ride jupe. He threatened to tell Dad and everything,

but I knew he wouldn’t.”

The girls changed into bathing suits in Honey’s room which was the prettiest room Trixie had ever seen. There were crisp white ruffled organdy curtains

at the windows with a matching bedspread and a big white fluffy rug on the polished floor. The long closet was filled with dainty summer frocks, and beneath

them, in individual cellophane boxes, were more shoes than Trixie had ever seen outside of a shoe store. Honey had her own private bathroom with a separate

glassed-in shower and a sunken tub that was big enough to have served Bobby as a wading pool.

“I feel as though I were in a castle,” Trixie said, in an awed voice. “I expect to see a fairy godmother any minute!”

Honey slipped into pale blue sharkskin shorts with a matching halter. “Sometime,” she said shyly, “maybe you could spend the night with me. My bed’s big

enough

109 96 for two, but if you’d rather you could sleep in one of the guest rooms.”

“I’d rather be with you,” Trixie said quickly. “That would be fun. And I know Moms would let me any time you ask me.”

Down at the boathouse, Trixie, who didn’t mind getting her short blond curls wet, dove off the diving board while Honey tucked her hair inside a bright

red cap. Trixie floated on her back, luxuriating in the coolness of the water which was fed by icy springs. She watched Honey do a perfect jackknife off

the board and cut cleanly through the water.

“Golly,” she said as Honey swam beside her, “you do the crawl better than Mart, and you could give us all diving lessons!”

Honey smiled. “That’s camp for you. There was never anything to do but swim and ride. I’ve been going to camp every summer since I was four, you know.”

After a while they stretched out in the sun to dry off. As though by magic, a trim little maid in a crisp uniform and cap appeared with a tray of lemonade

and a big chocolate layer cake.

“Do you realize,” Honey demanded as she poured fruit juice into tall glasses of cracked ice, “that we have known each other only a couple of days? So much

has

110 97 happened it seems a month! Nothing ever happened to me till we moved to the Manor House. And to think, at first, I thought I was going to hate it!”

“It’s a wonderful place,” Trixie said, reaching hungrily for the large piece of freshly baked cake that Honey handed her. “I wish we owned it.”