The Mystery off Glen Road

yesterday it was so hot we were wearing shorts and blouses.” They linked arms and started up the sloping lawn to the big house. “Speaking of clothes, we’d better start getting ready for the wedding reception. The ceremony is at noon.”
    “I know,” Trixie said mournfully. “I wish we could go just as we are. I never feel comfortable in anything but jeans. But I suppose I’ll have to wear a dress today.”
    Celia, the Wheelers’ pretty little maid, was getting married that day to Tom Delanoy, the handsome young chauffeur. After a wedding breakfast at the Manor House, they were going off on a two-week honeymoon. On their return, they would make their home in the Robin , a luxurious red trailer that was parked on the hill above the stable. The Robin had once belonged to Mr. Lynch, whose daughter, Diana, had recently been admitted to the club.
    “I wish I had enough money to buy Celia and Tom a wedding present,” Trixie said to Honey. “Moms and Dad are giving them those Adirondack blankets they wanted, but I’d like to give them something on my own.” She reached into the pocket of her jeans and produced a grimy dime. “Do you think a box of toothpicks would be appreciated?” Honey hugged her arm. “You’re so funny, Trix. Every time you hand over your money to the club, you make a big fuss, but deep down underneath, you’re the most generous girl in the world.”
    Trixie flushed with pleasure. “I’m not generous at all,” she mumbled. “I’m terribly selfish. I don’t help Moms half as much as I should. If we were rich like you, it would be different, but Moms does everything, and she never complains. Even when she’s canning gallons of stuff all day in boiling hot weather, she always looks so young and pretty. When I do help, I moan and groan. Honestly, Honey, half the time when Dad gives me that five dollars, I feel so guilty I wouldn’t take it if it weren’t for the club.”
    “Well, I think you work very hard and deserve it,” Honey said loyally. “But you’d better hurry home now.” She started up the steps to the wide veranda, and Trixie raced off down the path to her little white farmhouse in the hollow.
    There she found that Brian and Mart had just finished putting up the storm windows. They were carrying a long ladder down the terrace steps and greeted her with sour expressions on their faces.
    Mart, although several inches taller than Trixie, looked enough like her to have been her twin; He wore his sandy hair in a short cut; if he hadn’t, it would have been as curly as Trixie’s and Bobby’s. He narrowed his blue eyes and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Where have you been, if I may be so bold as to ask? You were supposed to wash, the storm windows before we put them up.”
    “Oh, is that so?” Trixie demanded, although she knew perfectly well that it was so; she had simply forgotten.
    “Yes, it is so!” Brian tiredly pushed a lock of his wavy jet black hair out of his eye.
    “Say,” Mart yelled, “hang on to your end with both hands, please. This wind will snatch the ladder away from us if you don’t watch out.”
    Brian grabbed the swaying ladder, and the wind promptly blew the lock of hair back into his eye. He glared at Trixie. “We don’t mind doing men’s work, which in this gale was supermens work, but when we have to do women’s work, too—ugh. I think the domestic help should be more reliable.”
    Trixie sniffed. “Help is right. That’s just what I am. I slave from morning to night, making beds, dusting and washing dishes, while you two—”
    “Dusting dishes?” Mart elevated his sandy eyebrows. “Come, come, young woman. No dish in our house stays on a shelf long enough to collect dust.” He licked his lips hungrily. “Personally, I can’t wait for that wedding breakfast. Which you are going to miss.”
    “Wha-at?” Trixie, buffeted by the gale, had been trailing them up the driveway toward the garage. Now she stopped dead in her tracks, and the wind almost blew her flat. “Oh, no, Mart!” she gasped. “I am going to the breakfast. Don’t tell me I’m going to be punished because I forgot to wash the storm windows. Moms and Dad wouldn’t be so cruel.”
    He glanced at her over one shoulder. “Our parents have not yet been informed of how remiss you
    were.” Mart, who considered himself far superior to Trixie mentally, loved to use big words when he talked to her. “Brian and I are not what, in the vernacular, would