The Mysterious Visitor

An UnhappyFriend • 1

    TRIXIE AND HONEY linked arms As they left their homeroom. "Oh, woe," Trixie moaned. "Homework on a Friday. It’s not fair. It’ll ruin the whole weekend." She was a sturdy girl of thirteen with short sandy curls and round blue eyes. "Every October since I learned to write," she complained, "the English teacher has given us the same old assignment." Trixie frowned, looked down her nose, and said in a high-pitched voice, " ‘Now, children, I want you to tell me, in not less than two hundred words, what you did this summer.’ Phooey! If I hand in a hundred words, I’ll be doing well. And they’re all sure to be spelled wrong and not punctuated properly."
    Honey Wheeler, who was Trixie’s best friend, laughed. She had earned her nickname because of her golden-brown hair, and she had wide hazel eyes. Although they were the same age, Honey was taller and slimmer than Trixie. "You couldn’t possibly," she said, "tell about everything we did this summer, Trixie, in a million words. I thought we’d divide up our exciting experiences. Since he’s my adopted brother now, I’ll tell how we found Jim up at the old Mansion and lost him and then found him again when we solved the red trailer mystery. You could tell about the diamond we found in the gatehouse, and the thieves who stole it from us, and how you helped the police capture them."
    Trixie sniffed. "Telling about something is one thing; writing about it is another. I never could write about things and make them sound interesting—not even when I was very interested in them myself. My fingers ache at the very thought of holding a pencil long enough to explain all about the gatehouse and the diamond and the thieves and everything. And how the gatehouse is our secret clubhouse now. Of course, I’d never tell that part of the story, anyway."
    "I should hope not." Although it was the last
    week of October, it was a very warm day. Honey pushed her bangs back from her forehead with her free hand. "You shouldn’t even talk about our club in the corridor when so many kids are milling around." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Suppose someone guessed that the initials B.W.G. stand for Bob-Whites of the Glen. Oh, Trixie, wasn’t it fun the first day of school when we wore our special red jackets and just baffled everyone?"
    Trixie nodded. "I don’t know how you ever made those jackets so quickly, Honey. And as for cross-stitching B.W.G. on the backs in white, well, that baffled me. As far as I’m concerned, all sewing is cross-stitching, because every time I look a needle in the eye I feel cross."
    Honey hugged Trixie’s arm. "As long as we’re neighbors, you don’t even have to think about sewing. I’ll always do your mending for you, Trix. I just love to sew, and mending is no trouble at all."
    The girls lived on Glen Road, which was about two miles from the junior-senior high school in the village of Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson. They, Jim Frayne, and Trixie’s older brothers, Brian and Mart, traveled to and from school by bus. The Manor House, which was the name of the Wheelers’ huge estate, included acres of rolling lawn and woodlands, a big lake, and a stable of handsome horses. It formed the western boundary of the Beldens’ Crabapple Farm, which nestled down in a hollow. Honey’s home was luxurious and very beautiful, but Trixie preferred the pretty little white frame house where she lived with her three brothers and their parents.
    "I hope we’ll always be neighbors," she said to Honey. "I would have died of loneliness last summer if your father hadn’t bought the Manor House. There was just no one around to talk to. Brian and Mart were away at camp, and there was nobody left but Bobby. And you can’t do things with him. Just keep him out of trouble—if possible—and wash his face and comb his hair and bandage his scraped knees. That’s not a very exciting way to spend a whole summer, let me tell you."
    "I know someone who’s dying of loneliness right now," Honey said thoughtfully. "And I feel awfully sorry for her."
    "Who?" Trixie asked curiously. With the exception of Honey, she had gone to grade school with all of the boys and girls who had entered junior high that September. She couldn’t think of one of them who had any reason for being lonely. Most of them lived in the pretty residential section of the town, which sprawled along the east bank of the Hudson River. Because they lived so near one another, they had