The Mysterious Code (17 page)

The sergeant turned on his swivel chair to dismiss them.

Tom had the two little Lynch boys, Larry and Terry, in the car with him when he picked up the Bob-Whites.

“This is a surprise,” Diana said and hugged her little brothers. “Where did you find them?” she asked Tom.

“Your mother went to New York, too, with Mrs. Wheeler, Diana,” Tom explained. “Miss Trask has the little girls with her, and the boys are going to stay at your house for dinner and the evening, Trixie.”

“Oh, goody,” Trixie said, “Bobby will be happy. He’s been so lonesome for someone to play with. Can’t you and Honey stay, too,” she asked Diana, “and Jim?”

“Your mother is away ahead of you,” Tom said. “She told me to dump the whole carload at Crabapple Farm. She’ll really have her hands full.”

“Not with us to help her,” Trixie said. “You don’t know my mother. This will be fun. Isn’t it wonderful that we have a holiday tomorrow because of Washington’s birthday? We can have all day tomorrow to get ready for our antique show and we don’t have to think about it
tonight. There’s Reddy to welcome us. And your dog, too, Jim!”

Reddy and Patch ran out wagging their tails. The two dogs were good friends.

“Down, Patch!” Jim commanded. “Heel!” Patch obeyed immediately.

“It won’t do to tell Reddy to get down, or to heel,” Mart laughed. “We’ve never trained him. We just play with him. He minds Bobby now and then when he feels like it.”

“Reddy doesn’t have to mind anyone all the rest of his life,” Trixie said, “not after the way he came home for help for us when we were lost in the blizzard. There’s Bobby waving from the window,” she said to Terry and Larry. “Run on in, while we collect our books. Won’t you come in for a cup of coffee?” she asked Tom.

“Celia would crown me if I did,” Tom answered. “We have a chance to have dinner all by ourselves in the trailer tonight, with all the families gone. I’ll be back about nine o’clock to pick everyone up.”

“That early?” Trixie asked.

“That’s an hour past the time Larry and Terry are supposed to go to bed,” Diana reminded her. “It’ll take almost another hour to get them to bed.”

“What difference does it make?” Mart wanted to
know. “Tomorrow’s a school holiday for us. Let the kids live it up. How about nine thirty, Diana?”

“All right,” Diana said, “nine thirty. Will it be all right for Tom to come then, Honey?”

“If Tom says so,” Honey answered.

The whole crowd followed the little boys into the house. Mr. and Mrs. Belden, in the kitchen, greeted them warmly. “Put your wraps in the study,” Mr. Belden said. “Your mother has dinner almost ready,” he added to Trixie.

Honey and Diana followed Trixie into the kitchen, tied aprons over their sweaters and skirts, and asked to be given something to do.

“You can finish making the Waldorf salad,” Mrs. Belden said. “Take this big bowl. The apples are already washed and so is the celery. Chop them, quarter the marshmallows, add them to it, and mix the whole thing together with mayonnaise. Make plenty of it.”

“What shall I do, Moms?” Trixie asked. “I know, I’ll fix the hamburgers and pat them into cakes.”

“Nobody
ever
made better hamburgers than you, Mrs. Belden,” Honey said. “How do you do it? They don’t taste nearly so good, even at Wimpy’s.”

“I add a slice of bread, crumbled and soaked in milk, to each pound of meat,” Mrs. Belden said. “Then I season the mixture with salt and pepper and just a little curry powder.”

“Bread and milk?” Diana asked, amazed.

“Yes. It keeps the juice in the hamburger patties,” Mrs. Belden explained.

“It does something delicious to it,” Honey said, dicing the apples and putting them into the bowl. “I love to cook.”

“You don’t have much chance to practice it, do you, with such a good cook as you have? There are times when
I’d
like to have a cook,” Mrs. Belden said.

“This isn’t one of them, is it, Moms?” Trixie asked.

“No indeed, not with such good helpers as I have. When you finish that, Trixie, you may spread the cream on the pumpkin pies. It’s whipped and in the refrigerator. Make plenty of hamburgers, though!”

“You’ll never ask Larry and Terry again when you see the way they consume hamburgers,” Diana said. “Listen to that yelling! I hope they don’t break anything.”

“Our living-room is child-proof,” Mrs. Belden said. “I think they are helping my husband lay the fire in the fireplace. After dinner we’ll pop some corn, and maybe roast some marshmallows.”

“Something smells super!” Jim said as he and Brian
went through the kitchen to get more wood for the living-room fireplace. “What is it?” he asked and sniffed the mixture Trixie was preparing.

“The old Belden stand-by, Moms’ hamburgers,” Trixie said. “She says you never can make a mistake feeding kids hamburgers.”

“Mmmmm, I didn’t know anyone could be as hungry as I am,” Jim said, as the air filled with the fragrance of baked beans, when Mrs. Belden drew a deep pan from the oven. “Baked beans were my daily fare when I lived in the woods by myself after Ten Acres burned. Mine came cold out of a can, though. There’s a subtle difference.”

When the food was ready, the Bob-Whites and Mr. and Mrs. Belden sat around the big table in the dining-room, made extra large with two added leaves. At a lower table nearby, the three little boys sat.

At first the twins were shy, but Bobby, loving every minute, soon won them over. “What is hot and cold at the same time?” he asked Terry and Larry. “Don’t you tell!” he warned Trixie.

“I don’t know,” Larry said. “Water?”

“No!” Bobby said. “It’s pepper! Jim told me that one.”

At the big table the family and guests all joined
hands while Mr. Belden asked the blessing. Then the fun began.

Dishes were passed from hand to hand, bowls emptied, replenished from the kitchen, emptied again. Mrs. Belden’s homemade catsup, old-fashioned beet pickles, corn relish, all disappeared as though by magic, topping the hamburgers. Casseroles of scalloped potatoes, the huge pan of baked beans, all were emptied, salad eaten, and dessert still to come.

Honey, Diana, and Trixie persuaded Mrs. Belden to sit quietly while they carried the plates and other dishes from the table. When the coffee was percolating merrily at Mrs. Belden’s right hand, and the cups waiting, hot cocoa or milk in all the children’s glasses, the girls brought in generous servings of pumpkin pie.

In the big living-room the fire roared up the chimney, sending a rosy glow over the old shabby room. Chairs and sofas were drawn to face the fireplace, and huge cushions were placed on the floor for the little boys.

The Bob-Whites banished Mr. and Mrs. Belden from the kitchen and attacked the mounds of dishes. They weren’t even aware of what they were doing, it was so much fun to do things together.

Trixie, remembering the time that afternoon when Diana and Honey had seemed so impatient with her and had told her she was no fun any more, looked around at their happy faces and was encouraged.

I just wish I needn’t ever be so bossy
, she thought to herself.
What would I do without Honey and Diana? I guess maybe especially Honey, for she’s my very best friend in the whole world
.

Something similar must have been going through Honey’s mind because she put her arm around Trixie and hugged her. “I
do
love you so much, Trixie,” she whispered, “and everyone in the Belden family.”

When they went into the living-room Mr. Belden was playing Simon Says Thumbs Up with Bobby, Terry, and Larry. They were falling all over themselves on the cushions, laughing so hard they couldn’t obey one of the “Thumbs Up!” “Thumbs Down!” commands. “You are supposed to obey me
only
when I say ‘Simon says,’ ” Mr. Belden explained. “Try again now, boys.”

When the Bob-Whites joined the group around the fireplace, Mr. Belden decided they would add forfeits as a penalty for failing to obey Simon’s commands. To make it easier, the forfeits wouldn’t apply to the little boys.

“Simon says Thumbs Up!” Mr. Belden said. All the
thumbs went up. “Thumbs Down!” he ordered. Honey and Mart put their thumbs down!

“Simon didn’t say it,” Mr. Belden explained. “Mart and Honey must pay forfeits. Will you take the forfeits?” he asked Mrs. Belden.

Within half an hour every Bob-White had contributed something, a shoe, a barrette, a wrist watch, a ring, a tie, or a bracelet.

Redeeming the forfeits was lots more fun than the game itself, especially with the forfeits the girls gave.

“I know what to tell Trixie to do,” Bobby whispered in his mother’s ear.

“Trixie’ll never do that, Bobby,” his mother said, smiling.

“She’ll have to or she won’t get her ring back,” Bobby insisted. “Go on, Trixie!”

So Trixie stood in the middle of the floor and sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” Her voice was true, and she did fairly well until she came to the high notes. “And the rockets red glare …” she tried. Her voice cracked and failed, and she dropped to the floor laughing as hard as Bobby.

“Now you tell me what penalty to give Diana,” Mrs. Belden said to Terry. The little boy whispered in her ear.

“I’m really going to enjoy this one,” Mrs. Belden
said and looked over to where Mart sat on the sofa. Then she whispered the penalty in Diana’s ear.

Diana, blushing to the ends of her finger tips, leaned over and brushed Mart’s cheek with a kiss.

That was the high point of the forfeits. Everyone was laughing so hard they couldn’t go on. Mart, who teased everyone else all the time, had finally had the tables turned on him by the little Lynch twin.

After that they knelt in a circle in the center of the room. Mr. and Mrs. Belden knelt, too.

Trixie started the game.

“I went to New York today,” she said.

“What did you buy?” Jim, next to her, asked.

“A fan to fan myself,” she said and waved her hand back and forth.

“I went to New York today,” Jim then said to Diana on his other side.

“Did you really?” Diana asked. “What did you buy?”

“A rocking chair and a fan,” Jim said and rocked back and forth while he fanned.

Down the line it went, each one adding a purchase and acting it out. Most of them wobbled and fell and were out of the game. Terry and Larry and Bobby were tumbling all over themselves trying to rock and fan and do half a dozen other things.

Patch and Reddy ran around the boys barking and adding to the general confusion and fun.

They wouldn’t excuse Mr. Belden, at the end of the line, from trying, so he fanned, he rocked, he held an umbrella, he smelled a rose, winked his eyes back of dark glasses, kicked his heels in new shoes, swayed to the music of a record player he bought, and finally fell over trying on a new hat.

Mrs. Belden brought in the popper and corn.

Jim whooped when he saw it. “I couldn’t down a grain of corn if my life depended upon it,” he said, “after that dinner I ate.”

“I could!” Bobby cried.

“I could!” Larry and Terry echoed.

So Mr. Belden brought in the big dishpan lined with waxed paper. Mrs. Belden poured a handful of corn into the popper and handed it to Mr. Belden. It sputtered and crackled and popped in no time into enormous white flakes which Mrs. Belden salted, buttered, and offered to the guests.

“Don’t pop another grain!” Honey finally said.

“The twins will burst,” Diana insisted, though they shook their heads vigorously. “I never saw them eat so much in all their lives.”

“It’s the goodest food,” Larry said.

“The goodest food in all the world,” said Terry, “an’ I’m goin’ to come here and live with Bobby.”

“Oh, Moms, can he? An’ Larry, too? Can’t they stay forever?”

“I’m afraid not, Bobby, honey,” Diana said. “But your mother said you will be able to come and see us soon, and, twinnies, there’s Tom now. He’s come for all of us.”

“I won’t go home,” Terry sobbed.

“I won’t, too,” Larry said. “Go home, Tom!”

“Tell me a riddle, Tom,” Bobby begged. “Regan always does.”

“All right,” Tom said, as he helped Diana and Honey button the howling twins into their snow suits. “Listen!” he said and miraculously they listened.

“What did the doughnut say to the layer cake?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” Terry yelled. “Tell me, Tom.”

“Don’t give up!” Bobby shouted. “Don’t tell, Tom!”

“I won’t,” Tom said, zipping the legs of the twins’ suits. “What did it say, Bobby?”

Bobby thought and thought and thought, but he didn’t have the answer. “Awright, I give up, too,” he finally said. “What did the doughnut say?”

“If I had all your dough I wouldn’t be hanging
around this hole,” Tom said. “Come on, kids, let’s go.”

Mrs. Belden brought out some cookies and an extra pumpkin pie and put them in a basket for Tom to take to Celia.

“It’s the most fun we’ve ever had in all our lives,” they all insisted as they trooped out. Trixie and the boys followed them, coatless, out to the station wagon.

Bobby called good-by constantly from the doorway, and the twins answered, waving till they almost fell from the seat beside Tom.