The secret of the Mansion

had ever seen. There were crisp white ruffled organdy curtains at the windows, with a matching bedspread and a big white fluffy rug on the polished floor. The long closet was filled with dainty summer frocks, and beneath them, in individual cellophane boxes, were more shoes than Trixie had ever seen outside of a shoe store. Honey had her own private bathroom with a separate glassed-in shower and a sunken tub that was big enough to have served Bobby as a wading pool.
    "I feel as though I were in a castle," Trixie said in an awed voice. "I expect to see a fairy godmother any minute!"
    Honey slipped into pale blue sharkskin shorts with a matching halter. "Sometime," she said shyly, "maybe you could spend the night with me. My bed’s big enough for two, but if you’d rather you could sleep in one of the guest rooms."
    "I’d rather be with you," Trixie said quickly. "That would be fun. And I know Moms would let me any time you ask me."
    Down at the boathouse, Trixie, who didn’t mind getting her short blond curls wet, dove off the diving board while Honey tucked her hair inside a bright red cap. Trixie floated on her back, luxuriating in the coolness of the water, which was fed by icy springs. She watched Honey do a perfect jackknife off the board and cut cleanly through the water.
    "Golly," she said as Honey swam beside her, "you do the crawl better than Mart, and you could give us all diving lessons!"
    Honey smiled. "That’s camp for you. There was never anything to do but swim and ride. I’ve been going every single summer since I was four years old, you know."
    After a while they stretched out in the sun to dry off. As though by magic, a trim little maid in a crisp uniform and cap appeared with a tray of lemonade and a big chocolate layer cake.
    "Do you realize," Honey demanded as she poured fruit juice into tall glasses of cracked ice, "that we have known each other only a couple of days? So much has happened it seems a month! Nothing ever happened to me till we moved to the Manor House. And to think, at first, I thought I was going to hate it!"
    "It’s a wonderful place," Trixie said, reaching hungrily for the large piece of freshly baked cake that Honey handed her. "I wish we owned it."
    "Oh, no, you don’t," Honey interrupted hastily.
    "Your little farmhouse is much cuter. It’s got such a nice, cozy, lived-in feeling. This place is—well, as you said yourself—like a castle. I don’t feel as though I belong here yet. But then, I felt the same way about our big duplex apartment in New York. It was just the place I stayed in, between camp and school." She added confidingly, "Mother doesn’t like it here. I guess that’s why Dad’s taking her on a trip this evening. Mother likes to have a lot of people around all the time."
    "Why, I’ve never even seen your mother," Trixie exclaimed wonderingly.
    Honey flushed. "I know, and I want you to meet her as soon as they get back. She’ll probably give a party and ask your mother and father. Mother was always giving parties in town or going out to them." She leaned forward a little, frowning. "I’m scared Mother won’t stay here this winter, and I’ll be sent away to school again! And, oh, gosh, Trixie, I want to stay here and go to school with you."
    "I hope you do," Trixie said enthusiastically. "And wouldn’t it be swell if old Mr. Frayne should get well and have Jim live with him? Then we could all go to school together."
    Honey nodded and sucked thoughtfully at her glass straw. "I’m so afraid his uncle will die, and he’ll have to go back to that awful Jonesy."
    The girls sat in the boathouse for a while, thinking about Jim’s problem, and then Trixie said, "We can’t go in swimming right after eating, so let’s row over to that cove on the other side of the lake. Brian and Mart and I always wanted to explore over there, but you can’t get to it from the woods on our property because there’s so much poison ivy."
    "I don’t know how to row," Honey objected. "Neither do I." Trixie slid off the landing into the boat. "But all you do, I think, is push backward or forward with the oars. We can figure it out somehow. Come on."
    Honey stepped in gingerly beside her. Trixie untied the boat and pushed it away from the landing. "I’ll row," she said. "And I think you’re supposed to sit in the stem. That’s the other end," she added with a giggle as Honey slipped past her and the boat rocked precariously. Honey sat down hard as Trixie put the