The Mysterious Code

to
tell you some of the things the B.W.G.’s have done,” said Honey. “Why, just
this Christmas we earned four hundred dollars out at a dude ranch and—”
    “Honey!” Jim warned.
    Honey covered her
mouth with her hand. She had been so carried away that she had almost told that
they had given the money to the little Navaho hotel maid at the ranch to help
pay for her father s operation.
    While Honey had been
talking, Trixie had wriggled around in her chair, impatiently waiting to have
the floor. Now she jumped up. “I have a wonderful ideal” she said.
“Mr. Stratton, could we please have just about fifteen minutes for a small
conference?”
    Mr. Stratton took
out his watch. “Mercy, yes,” he said. “I had an appointment at four fifteen,
and it’s nearly four thirty now. Just stay right here and talk things over.
I’ll be back at five.”
    Trixie, Honey,
Diana, Brian, Jim, and Mart stood till he left the room. Then they pulled their
chairs close around Trixie.
    “Let’s have it,
master brain,” said Mart. “I don’t see much ahead for the Bob-Whites but
sabotage by the school board.”
    “Don’t say that,
Marti” Diana cried, and she stamped her foot. “I know Trixie will think of
something to get us out of this trouble.”
    “She can get us into more trouble than a
bunch of Kilkenny cats,” said Mart.
    “And out of trouble, too,”
Jim said. “ I'll never forget who saved me from the fire when my great-uncle’s
mansion burned.”
    “You’d have been a
gone goose if she hadn’t thought of a way out when Di’s phony uncle tried to
kidnap both of you,” Brian reminded Mart.
    “That’s right,” Mart
said shamefacedly. “She saved Bobby, too, when the copperhead snake bit him.”
    “Please…“ Trixie
begged.
    “We could go on and
on telling of things Trixie has done for us,” Honey said, “even if she did get
us into some bad situations, too. Bight now, though, we have only a few minutes
to think of something to keep the Bob-Whites from going out of existence. All
right, Trixie, what’s your idea?”
    “How about something
to help the United Nations International Children s Emergency Fund?” Trixie
asked. Then she added dramatically, “UNICEF covers the whole world!”
    “Say, Trixie, that
really sounds like something,” Mart said excitedly. “Just let the school board
try to put the heat on us when were doing something for the United Nations!
That should satisfy them.”
    “No time for
back-patting yet,” Jim said slowly. "What does the Childrens Fund do,
Trixie?”
    “I only know about a
few things,” Trixie said, “but they are almost miraculous.”
    “For instance?” Jim
asked.
    “Working with other
organizations in the United Nations, UNICEF has trained nurses, doctors,
teachers, technicians, in about eighty countries in the world, helping them to
make use of their own resources. You see, it isn’t just for today they are
helping, but for years to come.” Trixie’s eyes shone as her idea unfolded.
    “Can you tell us of
some specific instance where the Fund has operated?” Mart was insistent “Mr.
Stratton will have to have facts to present to the board.”
    “Heavens, they already
know about the Fund itself, because we've been donating to it for a long time,”
Trixie said. “For your information, though, I can tell you that in Nicaragua, for instance, the Fund has helped build dry-milk factories so that milk could be
manufactured in the flat dairy land and then transported burro-back over the
mountains for children who have never even had a cup of milk in their lives.”
    “Trixie Belden, do
you really mean they’ve never had a drop of milk before?” Honey was so
tenderhearted her eyes filled with tears at the very thought
    “That’s what I mean.
In a lot of other non-dairy countries, too, such as Thailand, technicians sent
out by UNICEF have been teaching people how to make milk from soybeans. First
they taught them to grow, cultivate, and harvest soybeans.”
    “Food isn’t all,
either,” said Brian. Because he was going to be a doctor, he was aware of the
health needs of people in far-off countries. “Those nurses and doctors that
UNICEF trains have helped people get rid of malaria, trachoma, tuberculosis,
typhoid, diphtheria, and almost every crippling disease that has attacked
undernourished children.”
    “That surely makes
the little things we’ve been doing to help one another look pretty small,”
Diana said. “What can we do to