The Red Trailer Mystery

hearing every word we say."
    In a few minutes Mrs. Smith was scrambling eggs, to which she added chunks of yellow cheese. As usual, she dominated the conversation.
    "Now, mind you," she admonished Honey, who hadn’t had a chance to utter a complete sentence since all four of them had gathered around the big kitchen table. "Nobody told me in so many words that Joeanne was a boy, nor did anyone come right out and tell me that they were brothers." She poured a cup of cream into the mixture and stirred vigorously. "I thought it was simpler to jump to conclusions and ask no questions, with help as hard to get as it is. Now, Nat, only last night, said to me, ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘they are no more brothers than you and I are. Brother and sister, maybe, but they resemble each other about as much as that pet crow of yours resembles a peacock.’
    " ‘My pet crow indeed,’ I said, changing the subject because I knew as well as Nat did that the little one here was a girl and that somebody had done a clumsy job of hacking off her hair." Her black eyes twinkled at Jim. "I’ll give you a few lessons in barbering before you go, boy. You’re handy around a farm, I won’t deny, but you’d never get a job in a beauty parlor." She ran one hand through Joeanne’s thick, roughly cropped hair. "Reminds me of the mess Mr. Darnell’s mane was until I took shears and razor to him!" Joeanne gulped and started to say something, but Jim broke in sheepishly, "Ah, I didn’t want to hack off her pigtails, Mrs. Smith, and we didn’t plan to fool you—not that we did. When I found the poor kid crying in the woods not far from my camp, half of her hair was tangled in a bramble bush, and she couldn’t get loose. I had to chop her free."
    Joeanne nodded. "And then I looked so funny with only one braid, and I’d lost both hair ribbons by then, so I made him chop off the other pigtail." She smiled across the table at Trixie and Honey. "If I hadn’t hurried into the thicket to hide from you, my hair wouldn’t have got snarled in the brambles. I was afraid you’d take me to an orphan asylum, and I wanted to find Daddy and Mommy." Tears welled up in her big black eyes. "It was awful of me to run away and leave Mommy with the babies to take care of, but when Sally took your puppy, I couldn’t stand it any longer." She folded her arms on the table and buried her face in the crook of one elbow. "Daddy’s not a thief, I tell you. He’s not! "
    "There, there," Mrs. Smith said, gathering the thin little shoulders into her arms. "Nobody said he was, lambie, and you mustn’t worry anymore. Everything will turn out all right, just wait and see."
    She glared defiantly at Jim, who hadn’t the vaguest idea of what she was talking about. "Do you take Nathaniel Smith for a fool?" she demanded belligerently. "I’m the one who takes in every stray tramp, dog, boy, girl, and crow that taps at my door, and I ask no questions. Although I must say for myself, I do know a man’s daughter when I see her, especially when she’s the spit and image of her old man, as this one is."
    Jim’s green eyes popped. "Are you telling me, Mrs. Smith, that you know Joeanne’s father?"
    "Know him?" Mrs. Smith roared. "Didn’t I feed him three helpings of kidney stew only night before last in this very kitchen? And Nat insisting that I had nourished a viper, until I made him walk to the gas station and telephone this very morning and check with the police on the license plates of that borrowed trailer. ‘Stolen,’ says Nat. ‘Borrowed,’ says I. So I sent him right back to the gas station to call Mr. Lynch himself. And what does he tell Nat? "The Darnells?" he asks. "Why, they’re my very good neighbors. Please tell them they’re welcome to the use of the Robin for as long as they like.’ "
    She chuckled triumphantly. "I would have called the man myself if our phone wasn’t as dead as a doornail since the heavy rain yesterday."
    Joeanne raised her face, and her eyes were starry now. "Then my father didn’t steal that trailer, Mrs. Smith? He only borrowed it, just as Mommy said?"
    "Of course, lamb," Mrs. Smith assured her. "And even if he had stolen it, you had no business running away. If you were mine, I’d take the back of a hairbrush to you, and I may yet, but not until there’s more meat on your bones."
    It was so obvious that Mrs. Smith was probably incapable of even swatting a fly that everyone seated around the table burst into laughter.
    When Jim