The Mystery of the Millionaire

exhaustion. Mart followed, and then Trixie. They threw themselves onto the towels that were spread out on the beach and gasped for breath. Brian, Dan, Jim, and Laura soon followed.
    “That was fun!” Trixie breathed.
    “I heartily concur,” Mart added. “Superior divertissement.”
    “A great way to work up an appetite, too,” Jim said.
    “That sounds to me like a hint,” Honey said. “I’ll start laying the food out while the rest of you get your breath and change your clothes.” She stood up and walked to the picnic table.
    Soon the whole group was seated around the table, passing seemingly endless bowls and plates of food.
    “I thought Moms told Miss Trask that she was supplying the picnic basket today,” Trixie said, looking at the heaps of food on her plate and then at the food still heaped in the serving dishes on the table.
    “She did,” Honey said with a giggle. “But you know Miss Trask. She always wants to do ‘her share.’ ”
    “As I recall,” Jim added, helping himself to more potato salad, “Miss Trask said, ‘It’s very nice of Mrs. Belden to supply the food for the picnic. I’ll just have Celia prepare a few appetizers to add to it.’ ”
    “There’s enough here to feed all of Sleepyside, I think,” Trixie declared.
    “It’s all wonderful, too,” Laura Ramsey said. “Especially all these fresh vegetables. They’re hard to come by in New York.”
    “New York is an exciting city, but I think I like Sleepyside better,” Brian observed.
    “I don’t blame you. You have such a wonderful life here,” Laura told him.
    “You must have a wonderful life in the city, though,” Di Lynch said. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth in embarrassment.
    Laura smiled understandingly. “It has been wonderful,” she said. “And it will be again, as soon as my father is found.”
    “Do you work in the city?” Di asked, anxious to take everyone’s mind off her tactless remark.
    “I’m in college,” Laura told her. “I major in English at Columbia University. My father wanted—wants—me to major in business, but I’m afraid I don’t have much of a talent for it. I love to read, though.”
    “I wish I did,” Di said ruefully. Her grades were always a source of worry to herself and to her parents.
    “Maybe this year we’ll have a perfectly perfect English teacher who’ll make all of us better readers,” Honey said hopefully.
    “I wish I had a good book here right now,” Brian said. “I’m much too stuffed to move. Lying in the shade with something to read would be just the thing.”
    “Lying in the shade without a book would do just fine for me,” Di said.
    “After we get the table cleared,” Honey put in sternly. “Then you can lie in the shade for as long as you want to.”
    “Slave driver!” Mart complained. “ ‘O! that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work today.’ ”
    Laura Ramsey laughed. “You’re the only teenager I’ve ever met who always sounds like a poet, Mart.”
    Mart Belden blushed at the praise from Laura, looking even more like Trixie’s almost-twin as he did so. “If I sounded like a poet just then, it was because I was quoting one—Shakespeare.”
    “Ah,” Laura breathed. “Not just a poet—the best of poets!”
    “Indubitably,” Mart said, rising from the table with a bowl in either hand and carrying them to the picnic basket.
    Laura rose, too, and started to gather plates together.
    “Uh-uh,” Jim said to her. “You’re the guest of honor at this party. You shouldn’t have to help clear the table.”
    Laura flashed him a smile. “I don’t mind. Besides, I can use the exercise, after having so much to eat.”
    “If it’s exercise you want, how about a stroll around the lake?” Jim asked.
    Laura smiled again. “Sounds even better.”
    Jim and Laura walked off together, while Trixie glared at their retreating backs. “She doesn’t have to help because she’s the guest of honor, but what’s his excuse?” she said angrily.
    “He’s one of the hosts,” Honey said defensively. “He wants to make the guest of honor happy.”
    “She looked pretty happy while we were swimming. All through lunch, too, she looked as though she hadn’t a care in the world.”
    “She’s being very brave,” Di Lynch said.
    “Or very phony,” Trixie muttered.
    “Trixie Belden!” Honey said reproachfully. “Don’t tell me you’re going to let jealousy get the best of you, after