The Mystery off Glen Road

whole house. But my guess is that we’ll find him in less than five minutes.”

Too Good to Be True ● 19

    BUTTHEY DIDN’T. Even after they had all searched the big house, the stable, and the garage, there was no sign of Bobby.
    “I guess the boathouse is the next step,” Mart said reluctantly. “Let’s go, men. You girls check up on the clubhouse.”
    The boys started off in one direction, Di and Honey in another, but Trixie stood rooted to the spot. Her legs were trembling so she couldn’t move. It’s all my fault , she thought miserably. I was supposed to keep an eye on him , and he probably ran away to get back at me because I lost his compass.
    No, that wasn’t like Bobby. He only ran away when he himself had committed some crime. What crime had he committed? Trixie stood alone in the Wheelers’ kitchen and tried to think. Eating a whole bowl of potato chips wasn’t a crime in Bobby’s eyes. Bowl! That was the answer, of course. The brass bowl on the butterfly table. She herself, without thinking, had hurriedly dumped a big box of potato chips into it earlier that day. Bobby must have found the ring at the bottom. This provided him with a golden opportunity for revenge. He had no way of knowing that it was only a cheap imitation, and so he had probably gone off somewhere in order to hide it in some safe place. Bobby was forever hiding things in “a safe place” and then forgetting where the place was. A good safe place in this case might be at the bottom of the lake.
    Trixie shuddered. She could almost see him poised on the edge of a slippery rock in the moonlight... and nobody near enough to hear the splash and his cries of “Holp! Holp!”
    “No, no,” she told herself fiercely. “Bobby would take my ring and hide it, but he wouldn’t deliberately throw it away. He went off to hide it and then got so tired he fell asleep at the very spot. But where?”
    All of a sudden, Trixie thought she knew the answer. She grabbed a flashlight and raced off up the path to the red trailer. And there she found him, curled up on one of the bunks with Patch lying at his feet.
    “Bobby, Bobby,” she cried, gathering him into her arms. “Don’t ever do this again. You’ve scared us almost to death.”
    He opened his eyes and, hugging her tightly, immediately began to whimper. “Trixie, I tookted your ring and losted it. I didn’t mean to. It just slipped out of my hands, sort of, down the drainpipe. Mummy’s going to be awful mad at me ’cause I can’t never, never sell my squirrel-bird for enough money to buy you another one. So I runned away.” From sheer relief, Trixie was crying herself now. “It’s all right, Bobby darling,” she crooned. “The ring was only worth a dollar, and you don’t have to buy me another one. Stop crying, and I’ll tell you a secret.”
    “A see-crud?” He was all smiles now, twisting and wriggling delightedly. “An honest-to-goodness see-crud, Trix?”
    “That’s right,” she told him. “But you must promise not to tell Brian. Or Jim. Or Daddy and Moms. You can tell Mart and Honey, but nobody else. Promise?”
    He nodded his blond head solemnly.
    “Well,” she said, still holding him close, “I gave the real ring to Mr. Lytell so he wouldn’t sell that car Brian wants so much. You know the one. It was sort of a swap, like the Aladdin story in the Arabian Nights. Remember? Old lamps for new. I don’t care anything about the real ring even, but Brian does care an awful lot about the car. It’s going to be a surprise, see? So you mustn’t tell him.”
    And then Trixie felt rather than heard someone coming up the trailer steps. She whirled around, and there was Brian. The expression on his face was one of utter amazement, and at first she thought it was because he had not really dared to hope that he might find Bobby in the Robin. But when he spoke, she realized that while he had been walking silently along the pine-needle carpet of the path, he must have heard her sharing the secret with Bobby. Wordlessly he took the little boy out of her arms and hugged him as tightly as she had hugged him. After what seemed like a long silence, he said, “I don’t know whether to brain you or bless you, Trixie.” He left the trailer and hoisted Bobby to his broad shoulders.
    Trixie followed them slowly down the path toward the stable. “Oh, don’t be mad, Brian,” she pleaded. “I don’t care anything about that silly old ring.”
    “Mad?” he asked in a