The Mysterious Visitor

Or tornadoes. And the gentle little breeze that wafted into my window this morning wasn’t exactly a hurricane." He shrugged, waving his hands. "But, of course, Trix, if you say the clubhouse is gone, why, it’s gone. Poof! Vanished into thin air."
    "Oh, cut it out," Brian commanded and appealed to Jim. "What’s Trixie trying to tell us?" Jim explained, but no sooner had he finished than Honey appeared and had to be told the bad news all over again. Then they all began talking at once.
    "It’s just not possible," Honey wailed, sinking down on the grassy lawn. "I always thought Celia was one of our best friends."
    "And the gatehouse was such a perfect place," Mart said. "Who would have thought that anybody else would have it as a gift?"
    "It was perfect," Brian agreed, "but let’s think of it in the past tense from now on, definitely. It isn’t ours. It never was, really, so that’s that." Trixie tossed her sandy curls. "I don’t think we should give up so easily. Let’s go down there and make it so hideous Celia will never want to go near it again. I feel like gouging holes in the floors."
    "That’s a good idea," Mart said sarcastically. "Especially since the floors are dirt. Even Bobby would be able to replace your divots without too much trouble."
    "Then let’s smear tar all over the walls," Trixie suggested, half-laughing, half-serious. "Gallons and gallons of nice sticky, smelly black tar ought to do the trick!"
    Honey frowned up at her. "I don’t see how you can joke, Trixie, when everything is so perfectly awful."
    "That’s right," Jim said. "Let’s try to make some sense for a change."
    But although they spent most of the weekend trying to figure out how to solve this new problem, they got nowhere. Honey kept saying, "There’s plenty of land." And Jim would reply, "But the ground will be frozen soon." Then Brian would say, "We could knock together a shack, but we don’t want that."
    Mart finally summed it up: "Let’s let it simmer in our subconscious minds until next Saturday and hold another meeting then. We’re all too stunned right now to make sense."
    Trixie was only too glad to second this motion. She, herself, hadn’t been able to contribute anything in the way of ideas at the meeting because her thoughts were so jumbled. Somehow she had to prove that Uncle Monty was an impostor, but first of all she wanted to find out why Di refused to come to the phone on Saturday.
    It didn’t make sense, unless Harrison, because he didn’t approve of her, had deliberately lied. "Harrison never did like me," Trixie reflected. "And now, since he knows that I swiped a candle from the dining room at the party, he probably has decided that I’m not exactly fit company for Di."
    For once in her life, Trixie was glad to go to school on Monday morning. Di was not on the bus, but there was nothing unusual about that. As often as not, she traveled to and from school in the limousine.
    When the bus stopped in front of the school, Trixie was the first one off. She tore into the locker room, and, as she had hoped, found Di there. Suddenly Trixie was tongue-tied. All weekend she had planned just what she would say at this very moment, but now all she could get out was "Oh, hello, Di."
    Diana carefully placed her coat on a hanger inside her locker and slammed the door. "Don’t you speak to me, Trixie Belden," she said and swept past her without another word.
    Trixie’s heart sank. Harrison hadn’t lied, after all. Honey came into the locker room then, and Trixie said, "Di isn’t speaking to me. I didn’t say anything about it before, Honey, but when I called her from your house on Saturday she wouldn’t come to the phone. And I don’t know why, Honey."
    Honey gasped. "Oh, Trixie, you’ve hurt her feelings. She knows you think her uncle is an impostor and a thief and everything."
    Trixie shook her head. "She can’t know unless one of us told her, and none of us would, since we know how she feels about Uncle Monty."
    The bell rang then, and they hurried off to their homeroom. All morning Trixie wandered from class to class in a daze. During classes she never once raised her hand, and when called on for answers, she stumbled and stuttered and was sternly frowned upon. The math instructor did more than frown. She said crossly, "Trixie, I’m sorry, but you can’t go home on the bus today. You’ll have to see me after school. Please call your mother during lunch and arrange for some other