The Happy Valley Mystery

the fundamentals of sheep-raising.”
    “Isn’t he smart?” asked Diana, who sat beside Mart, widening her big violet eyes.
    “Maybe so,” Trixie answered reluctantly. Mart always exasperated her with his big words. “But what does it mean? I don’t think he knows, half the time, what he’s saying.”
    “Maligned, misunderstood, and mistrusted,” Mart sighed. “Hey, look at the time! We must be within ten minutes of the Des Moines airport.”
    Only a week before, Andrew Belden, on his way to Glasgow, had stopped for a brief visit with his brother Peter and his family at their home, Crabapple Farm, near Sleepyside.
    Uncle Andrew had never married and was devoted to his nieces and nephews, especially Trixie and the youngest Belden, Bobby, just six. He was the Belden children s very favorite uncle.
    When he found his niece and the two older boys at loose ends, it disturbed him. He didn’t know that they had spent part of the winter working hard on a successful antique show for the benefit of UNICEF and that they had just staged an equally successful ice carnival for the relief of earthquake victims in Central America. Now spring vacation was at hand, and they were restless; they didn’t know what to do with the free time.
    The evening after he arrived, Uncle Andrew went with Trixie, Brian, and Mart to a regular meeting of the Bob-Whites. He was amazed at the snug clubhouse, with its central meeting room and the big room where the club’s athletic equipment was kept.
    “It used to be the gatehouse for our home, Manor House,” Honey Wheeler explained to him. “It was falling to pieces when Daddy gave it to us. We’ve done all the remodeling ourselves.”
    Trixie had shown Uncle Andrew the big Manor House, just up the hill from Crabapple Farm, with its sloping lawns, stables, and small lake. Diana Lynch’s home, just beyond Honey’s, was just as impressive, for her father was a millionaire, too.
    “I like our home best, though,” Trixie confided to her uncle. “It may be smaller, and we all have to work hard to help out Moms with the garden and with the chickens, but I never want it to change.”
    At the clubhouse, as she watched her uncle, Trixie had thought, He likes Honey. I can tell that he does. And Di, too— and, as Jim and Dan showed him samples of the posters and handbills they had printed for the ice carnival—I guess he likes all the Bob-Whites.
    “Do you mean to tell me you did all the promotion work for the projects, too?” Uncle Andrew asked. “Printed all these things yourselves?”
    “Yes, we did,” Trixie said proudly. “It was lots of work, but it was lots of fun, too. I wish we had something exciting planned for spring vacation!”
    Uncle Andrew was impulsive. He sized people up quickly. “He never made a mistake doing it, either,” Trixie’s father often said.
    “Why don’t you all go out and stay at my home, Happy Valley Farm, for the week?” he asked. “I’ll finance the expedition. You can fly out Sunday morning and be in Des Moines for a late lunch, then be back again the next Sunday and ready for school Monday morning.”
    “Jeepers!” Trixie exclaimed. “Well... well-I-I... jeepers!”
    ‘Wouldn’t we be an awful lot of trouble?” practical Brian inquired.
    “Not a bit. Just the opposite. My hired man has to be away for a couple of days next week, and there may be ways you can help Hank and Mary Gorman, my manager and his wife.”
    “Gosh, we’d like that,” Brian said.
    “There are plenty of bedrooms for the girls in the farmhouse,” Uncle Andrew continued, “and a lot of room for the boys where the hired man stays, upstairs in the barn. It’s snug and warm, with good beds: What do you say?”
    “I say let’s go I” Honey and Diana said together.
    “Me, too,” Jim said. “That is, if you really mean we can help.”
    “I’m stuck here,” Dan Mangan said regretfully. “I have to be tutored to stay in the same class with Jim and Brian, and I sure want to do that. It sounds pretty super, though.”
    “If Trixie doesn’t have some sleuthing to do, she’ll be sunk,” Mart said, roughing his sister’s sandy curls. “What do you mean?” Uncle Andrew asked.
    “She’s Trixie, the girl detective,” Mart explained, “and Honey’s her faithful gumshoe companion.” Mart then told Uncle Andrew of some of Trixie’s escapades.
    “That’s hard to believe,” Uncle Andrew said when Mart had finished. “She’s such a pretty little