INTERESTING NEWS
The midwinter blizzard continued, and so intense was the cold and so
unceasing the cutting, icy blast that Miss Demorest, at the request of
several parents, sent forth a messenger to inform the day pupils that
classes would not be resumed until the storm had subsided. But wind, ice
and snow had no terrors for the members of the “S. S. C.,” and, since
important matters were afoot in the reorganization of their club, it was
decided, by those whose ’phones had not been put out of use by the
tempest, to beg or borrow a sleigh and hold the meeting at the home of
Bertha Angel on Monday instead of the following Saturday. Mr. Angel,
being a grocer, possessed several delivery sleighs, and since Bertha
could drive as well as her brother Bob, Merry, whose ’phone was out of
order, was amazed to see such an equipage draw up in front of her door at
about two on that blizzardy afternoon. Her first thought was that Bob was
delivering groceries, but why at the front of the house, since he always
went in at the side drive? Then, as the snow curtain lifted a little, she
discerned the forms of several persons warmly wrapped and actually
huddled on the straw-covered box part of the delivery sleigh. The driver
was tooting on a horn and looking hopefully toward the house. Then it
dawned on Merry that it was Bertha who was driving, and not Bob, as she
had supposed. In a twinkling she leaped to the door of the storm
vestibule and called that she would be right with them. And she was, clad
in her warmest; an Esquimaux girl could not have been more hidden in fur.
How her brown eyes sparkled as she climbed up on the front seat by the
driver, which place had been reserved for her since she was president.
“Of all the grand and glorious surprises!” she exclaimed, glancing back
at the laughing huddle, as Bertha drove out of the gate. “Why, I declare
to it, you’ve even got our rose-bud. How did you manage that? I didn’t
think her mother would let her out of the house again until next summer.”
“It took lots of loving ‘suasion’, I can assure you.” Rose replied. “And
I don’t even know if _that_ would have worked had it not been that an old
friend whom Mother hadn’t seen in years arrived in a station sleigh to
spend the afternoon, and in order to be freed from my teasing, the lovely
lady said, ‘Wrap up well and take a foot-warmer.’”
“Three cheers for the friend!” Merry said; then added, drawing her fur
coat closer: “My, how dense the snow is! Give me that horn, Bursie; I’ll
toot so that other vehicles will know that we are coming.”
The comfortable old white house set among tall evergreen trees that was
the Angel’s home was in the center of town on the long main street and
not far from the Angel grocery, the best of its kind in the village.
Bertha drove close to the front steps, bade the girls go right in and
wait for her in the sitting-room while she took the delivery sleigh back
to the store, but hardly had they swarmed out when a merry whistle was
heard through the curtain of snow and the form of a heavy-set boy
appeared. “Oh, good, here comes Bob!” his sister called. “I’d know that
whistle in darkest Africa. It outrobins a robin for cheeriness.”
“Hello, S. S. C.’s,” a jolly voice called, and then a walking snowman
stopped at the foot of the steps and waved a white arm to the girls who
were standing under the shelter of the porch roof. “Going to spread some
more sunshine today? Well, it sure is needed.”
Bertha, having climbed down, Bob leaped up on the high seat and took the
reins, then with a good-natured grin on his ruddy, freckled face, the boy
called: “It was shabby of us to guess what your S. S. C. meant, wasn’t
it? Boys _are_ clever that way, but girls aren’t supposed to be very
clever, you know. If they’re good looking and good cooks, that’s all we
of the superior sex expect of them.”
“Indeed, _is that so_, Mr. Bob?” Peggy just could not keep quiet. “I
suppose you think _we_ never could guess the meaning of your ‘C. D. C.’”
“I know you couldn’t,” Bob replied with such conviction that Merry,
fearing it would tantalize Peg into betraying their knowledge, changed
the subject with: “S’pose you’ll take us all home, Bob, before dark sets
in.”
“Righto!” was the cheery response as the boy started the big dapple horse
roadward.
Fifteen minutes later the girls were seated about the wide fireplace in
the large, comfortably furnished living-room. This home lacked the
elegance that was to be found in the palatial residence of Rose, nor did
it have the many signs of culture that Merry’s father and mother had
collected in their travels, but there was a homey atmosphere about it
that was very pleasant.
Mrs. Angel, short, plump, cheerful, whom Bob closely resembled, appeared
for a moment to greet the girls and then returned to a task in another
part of the house.
Bertha, who had disappeared, soon returned with a huge wicker basket. “I
thought we might just as well keep on with our ‘Spread Sunshine’
activities,” she explained, “even though we have added a new meaning to
our ‘S. S. C.’” She was taking out small all-over aprons of blue gingham
as she spoke. The name of a girl was pinned to each one.
“Sure thing.” Merry reached for her garment. “Our fingers can sew for the
orphans while our tongues can unravel mysteries if—” her eyes were
twinkling as they turned inquiringly toward Peggy Pierce, “our committee
of two has unearthed one as yet.”
“Of course we haven’t!” was the maiden’s indignant response. “How could
we find a mystery in a snow-storm like this?”
“True enough!” Merry said in a more conciliatory tone. “I really had not
expected you to.”
“In truth,” Rose, curled in the big easy chair near the fire, put in
teasingly, “for _that_ matter, we don’t expect a real mystery to be
unearthed in this little sound-asleep town of Sunnyside. Goodness, don’t
we know _everybody_ in it, and don’t our parents know _their_ parents and
their grandparents and——”
“Well, somebody new _might_ come to town,” Doris, the second member of
the sleuth committee, remarked hopefully.
“Sure thing, someone _might_,” Merry said with such emphasis on the last
word that Bertha dropped her work on her lap to comment: “You speak as
though you _knew_ that someone new is coming.”
“I do!” Merry replied calmly, bending over her sewing that the girls
might not see how eager she was to tell them her news.
“Stop being so tantalizing, Merry! What in the world do you know today
that you didn’t know Saturday?” Peg inquired.
“Oh, I know, I know!” Rose sang out. “It’s something that handsome boy,
Alfred Morrison, told you when he went to call on Jack. Out with it,
Merry; don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Of course! How stupid we didn’t think to ask what happened after you and
Alfred Morrison had left us at our homes,” Doris put in. “We knew he was
going with you to call on Jack. Is _he_ coming to live in Sunnyside? Say,
wouldn’t it be keen if he did?”
“Well, you are all warm anyway,” Merry conceded. “The someone who is
coming to live in Sunnyside; I mean the someone to whom I am referring,
is a girl, but I guess _we won’t_ want to cultivate _her_ acquaintance at
all, at all.”
“Merry Lee, if you don’t tell us, I shall come over there and shake you
until you do.” Betty Byrd was so tiny that this threat made the girls
laugh gaily, but it had the desired effect, for their president ceased
teasing and told them a story which interested them greatly.