The Mysterious Code

ourselves
in the trailer tonight, with all the family gone. I’ll be back about nine
o’clock to pick up everyone.”
    “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, Di?”
    “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 shape the meat into
patties.”
    “Nobody ever made better hamburgers than you, Mrs. Belden,” Honey said. “How do you do it?
Even at Wimpy’s they don’t taste nearly so good.”
    “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 some wood for
the living-room fireplace. “What is it?” he asked and sniffed the mixture
Trixie was preparing near the stove.
    “The old Belden
standby, Moms’s 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, com relish, all
disappeared as though by magic. Casseroles of scalloped potatoes, the huge pan
of baked beans, all were emptied. The salad was eaten, with dessert still to
come.
    Honey, Diana, and
Trixie persuaded Mrs. Belden ' to sit quietly while they carried the plates