The Mystery at Saratoga

words. When he and Brian are away, I can’t seem to scale down my recipes enough to avoid leftovers. However, these mashed potatoes can be turned into potato patties for lunch tomorrow.”
    “Yummy-yum!” Trixie exclaimed.-“You know how I love potato patties. Now I wish I hadn’t eaten that second helping of potatoes and gravy tonight, so there’d be more left over for tomorrow!”
    Mrs. Belden smiled indulgently. “There’ll be plenty.” Her face turned somber. “Now, Trixie, while your father is reading the evening funny papers to your brother, why don’t you tell me what’s happened to Regan?”
    Trixie sank into a chair and propped her elbows on the kitchen table. “We don’t know what’s happened to him, Moms. That’s just the problem.” Trixie repeated everything that she’d learned that afternoon at the clubhouse. “He’s just gone,” she concluded sadly.
    “I’m sure he’ll come back as soon as he can,” Mrs. Belden said consolingly. “Regan has always seemed to be very happy here in Sleepyside. Did Honey think that Mr. Wheeler would hold Regan’s job for him?”'
    Trixie nodded. “That’s the only good news in the whole thing. Miss Trask told Honey that Regan has loads of vacation and sick time coming. Why, the only time he’s ever taken off was when he went to get Dan. Miss Trask says there’ll be no question of trying to find a permanent replacement for Regan until that time is used up. Even then, she says, she’ll give him a leave of absence if he’s contacted her to let her know why he’s away.”
    “Well, then,” Mrs. Belden said calmly, “I don’t think we have anything to be alarmed about yet. We’ll just tell Bobby, if he asks, that Regan has gone on a little vacation, and that he’ll probably be back soon. The last part won’t even be a white lie, because I really believe that he will.”
    Trixie nodded half-heartedly, but as she picked up a dish towel and began to dry the dishes her mother was washing, she realized that she, herself, didn’t really believe that Regan would be back.
    Why, oh, why do Mart and Brian and Jim have to be away? Honey and Trixie had found Jim when he ran away to upstate New York, and at the same time the two girls had solved the mystery of Mr. Lynch’s stolen trailer, the Robin. But ever since then, the boys had been just as much a part of the mysteries they’d been involved in as Honey and Trixie had. Will Honey and Dan and I be able to find Regan without their help? I guess all we can do is try.
    “The library it is,” she murmured aloud.

A Shadow from the Past ● 3

    TRIXIE HAD FINISHED drying the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, and she was waiting impatiently outside, pacing up and down the front walk, when Honey and Dan rode up the driveway.
    “I thought you’d never get here!” she exclaimed. “Now, Trixie,” Honey chided her, “it’s not very late at all. In fact, Miss Trask had the cook serve our dinner early, so that I could get away.”
    “Did you tell her where we were going, and why?” Trixie asked.
    Honey nodded. “She just sort of raised one eyebrow when I told her. Then she said, ‘I know how fond all of you are of Regan. But please, please, Honey, don’t become involved in another one of your mysteries!’ ”
    Trixie giggled at Honey’s perfect impersonation of Miss Trask’s low, well-modulated voice. “I just told Moms that we were going to the library. I didn’t tell her why, but I’d already told her about Regan’s disappearance. That’s probably why she gave me that same ‘here-we-go-again’ look that Miss Trask gave you.”
    “I can’t understand why they’d think that we were about to get involved in solving a mystery,” Dan Mangan said sarcastically. “I mean, it isn’t as though it’s ever happened before.”
    Trixie and Honey both laughed self-consciously. Ever since the two teen-age girls had met and had been involved with trying to help Jim Frayne find the fortune his uncle had left him, it seemed that they were constantly stumbling across mysteries. Their parents warned them against trying to solve them—and they often warned each other, too. Nevertheless, the Bob-Whites already had to their credit a long string of cases marked “closed.”
    “It isn’t really a laughing matter,” Dan said sternly, although there was still a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “You girls have got yourselves into a lot of trouble trying to solve these mysteries. If I were your