The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

said.
    “Well, I mean never go down again, no matter what we’d find at the bottom. One experience like that will last me!” Mart was emphatic.
    “I don’t even want to come over on this side of the lake again,” Honey said, her voice quivering.
    Bill Hawkins, still dazed, just kept repeating, “It was all my fault—all my fault.”
    “It wasn’t anyone’s fault except my very own,” Trixie said.
    “Say what you want, I was responsible. If it had been one of my own children down there, I couldn’t feel worse. All I thought about was keeping a lookout for Slim. I even saw the clouds and knew it was going to rain. It never occurred to me there’d be any danger from rain inside the cave.”
    “It’s all over now, and that’s all we need to care about,” Trixie said. “Except, gosh, I wish Uncle Andrew didn’t have to know I went down in that sinkhole like that.”
    “Or that I let you go,” Mart said.
    “And me,” Honey added.
    “He’ll have a good right never to speak to me again,” Bill Hawkins said. “Let’s go over to the lodge now. Trixie needs dry clothes and something hot to drink. We might as well face Andy Belden now as later.”
     
    “You’re all soaked through,” Mrs. Moore said as they trooped into the lodge. “I could see that downpour across the lake. It hardly rained here at all. My! You look almost drowned!”
    Honey caught her breath at the word, but Trixie said quickly, “We did get pretty wet. I guess we’d better change our clothes.”
    “I’ll make some hot chocolate,” Mrs. Moore said. “Bill, will you have some coffee, or are you in too much of a hurry to go on home?”
    “I’m not going home till I get a chance to talk to Andy,” Hawkins said. “I’ll have a cup of coffee, please, then I’ll go out and work on the mule shed till he gets here.”
    “Everybody acts so queer,” Mrs. Moore said to the Bob-Whites after they’d changed to dry clothes. “Bill hardly drank a spoonful of coffee. Did anything happen over there in the cave? Was that Slim up to more of his wickedness?”
    “Jim, bring out the bait buckets, please, and show Mrs. Moore what we found today,” Trixie said as she sipped her hot chocolate. “We found fish and salamanders, and Mart has a queer bottle and a spider in his specimen jar. It was quite a day!”
    “You can say that again!” Mart said solemnly.
    Jim showed Mrs. Moore the fish, then he and the other boys took the buckets down to the cold cellar to the galvanized tank.
    “You aren’t fooling me one bit, Trixie Belden,” Mrs. Moore said when they had gone. “I know something out of the way happened at the cave. Look at Honey’s face!”
    “My face?” Honey asked. “What’s wrong with my face?”
    “It has fright printed all over it,” Mrs. Moore said. “I don’t have a daughter your age without being able to read a girl’s face. Never mind; your uncle and Linnie just drove in the yard, and it won’t take him long to find out what’s wrong.”
    It didn’t take Uncle Andrew long to find out, because Bill Hawkins told him as soon as he stepped from the wagon. The Bob-Whites saw him in earnest conversation with Uncle Andrew and ran out into the yard. Mrs. Moore followed.
    Trixie put her arms around her uncle. He held her close to him and listened, white-faced, till Bill Hawkins finished his story.
    “It wasn’t that way at all,” Trixie tried to explain. “It wasn’t Mr. Hawkins’s fault. It was every single bit mine, no matter what anyone says.”
    Uncle Andrew’s arms tightened around Trixie. “My own brother’s child nearly drowned. Oh, I do thank God you’re safe. These children,” he said to Bill Hawkins, “are as dear to me as they could possibly be if they were my own. To think how near we came to losing this little girl! How could you, Bill?”
    Mrs. Moore held her apron over her face and cried unrestrainedly.
    “It wasn't Mr. Hawkins’s fault. I keep telling you that, Uncle Andrew. He didn’t know a thing about what was going on inside that cave. He was watching for Slim outside, just as you told him to. Tell him you don’t blame him, please. He feels so bad!”
    “It’ll take me some time to do that, Trixie. I’m sorry, Bill, but that’s the way it has to be.”
    “I don’t blame you a bit, Andy. It’ll be a longer time till I forgive myself. I’ve still got to tell Minnie about it, too.” He strode off up the trail that led to his house.
    “I hate to see him so worried.