The Mystery off Glen Road

has to cope until she can lure another one out to the Manor House. Oh, fine! Ben is such a jolly fellow!”
    “Oh, veddy, veddy jolly,” Brian agreed in a very British tone of voice. “What ho, and all that sort of thing.”
    “I like crab apple jolly,” Bobby announced. “And so does Ben.”
    “That’s just it,” Mrs. Belden said hastily. “Ben is really a very nice boy.” She reached over to pat Trixie’s hand. “A very nice boy. He’s just young for his age, that’s all.”
    “So is Trixie,” Brian said in a very older-brother tone of voice. “For her age, I mean. And just because she’s temporarily insane, Dad, doesn’t mean you should let her have that diamond ring so Bobby can plant it under a barberry bush.”

    It went on like that all week. Trixie, acting on advice she received from Di Lynch and Honey, did everything possible to convince her parents that she was now ladylike enough to wear the ring Jim had given her. She wore sloppy clothes only when she exercised the horses and did her chores. She wrote Trixie Belden loves Benjamin Riker on scraps of paper and left them in strategic spots all over the house. Di and Honey donated to the cause all kinds of costume jewelry, which Trixie wore every evening at dinner. By Thursday night, Brian and Mart, worn out by the work they had to do on the clubhouse during the few hours of daylight after school, stopped making comments. She appeared at the table wearing six bracelets on each arm, earrings, and ropes of cheap pearls around her neck. Nobody, not even Bobby, said a word. Trixie sank into her chair and said dramatically, “My hands—they feel so naked. If only I had just one teeny-weeny diamond ring.”
    Mr. Belden groaned. “Very well, Trixie,” he said. “I’ll bring your ring home from the bank tomorrow afternoon. You may keep it until you go back to school on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Then it goes back into our safe-deposit box. Do you understand?”
    Trixie jumped up and raced around the table to throw her arms around her father. “Oh, Dad,” she cried, “you don’t know what this means to me. You’ll never, never know.”
    Brian and Mart said tiredly to each other in unison, “Ugh! How sedimental can our sibling get?”
    “She’ll drop that ring down the kitchen drain first time she washes a dish,” Brian predicted.
    “I don’t think so,” Mart argued. “She’ll lose it in the chicken-feed bin, with all that entails. We will have to sift the grain and mash in order to retrieve it.”
    “Oh, I doubt that,” Brian said sarcastically. “Too easy, much too simple. She’ll wear it when she goes swimming in the lake, and then we’ll have to use grappling irons, or maybe drain the lake. That would mean damming up all the brooks and streams around here. But Trixie wouldn’t care. What’s a few thousand dead fish to a girl’s whim?”
    Bobby chimed in, beating on his plate with a spoon to attract attention. “You better not lose that ring, Trixie. It must be worth a zillion dollars.” Trixie ignored them all. She had won the battle. On Saturday morning, when she and Honey exercised the horses, they would ride to Mr. Lytell’s little store. She would give him the ring as security so then he would have no excuse for selling Brian’s jalopy.

Suspicions • 7

    IT’S NOT AS SIMPLE as you think,” Honey argued on Saturday morning as they trotted their horses through the woods on the north side of Glen Road. “You’ve got your ring, yes, but you know how peculiar Mr. Lytell is. He’s an old gossip, and he’s always very suspicious, even when there’s nothing to be suspicious about. What makes you think he won’t tell your father that you gave him the ring as security for Brian’s jalopy?” She reined in Strawberry because just ahead of them on the narrow path was a fallen tree. “Now what?” she demanded over her shoulder.
    Trixie, who was riding Mrs. Wheeler’s gentle little mare, Lady, stopped, too. “Umm,” Trixie said, peering at the debris. “I guess we’ll have to get off, tie our horses to a tree, and move that stuff, Honey.”
    “We can’t,” Honey wailed. “We’re not strong enough. It would take a bulldozer, Trixie Belden, and you know it.”
    “I thought a bulldozer had already cleared all of these paths,” Trixie said. “Isn’t this part of your father’s game preserve, Honey?”
    Honey nodded. “I guess the crew Regan hired skipped this path. We’ll have to go back to the