A NEW RESOLVE
On Monday morning Geraldine awoke with a new resolve. Never again would
she be put in the embarrassing position of not being able to do anything
really useful when the “S. S. C.” got up a dinner, and not for worlds
would she have Jack Lee know that she had considered cooking menial: an
accomplishment far beneath her. His ideas and ideals were very different
from those she had acquired at the fashionable seminary in Dorchester.
When the girl went down to breakfast, she found that the Colonel and
Alfred had gone early to town. Mrs. Gray was waiting for her, sitting in
the sunny bow window reading the morning paper. “Oh, here you are,
dearie.” She rose briskly as she added, “I’ll have to go down to the
kitchen to get the things I’ve been keeping warm for us.”
Geraldine looked surprised. “But why doesn’t Sing send them up on the
lift?” she asked.
Mrs. Gray, at once sober, shook her head as she said: “Poor Sing! It
seems that he went to Dorchester to the Chinese quarters yesterday to see
a sick friend, and while there the place was quarantined for smallpox and
he will have to remain away at least two weeks.”
“Oh, Mrs. Gray, whatever _shall_ we do? How can you do all the
housekeeping and—the cooking as well.”
The old lady smiled at the girl lovingly. “Do you know, Geraldine,” she
began, “I sort of thought that perhaps _you_ would like to help me. Now
that you can make a bed the way Merry Lee taught you, if you would make
the Colonel’s and Alfred’s——”
“Of course I can, and will!” was the almost unexpected rejoinder. “And
better than that,” the girl flashed a bright smile at the old lady, “I’m
_glad_ Sing is going to be away for two weeks, because that will give us
a chance to use the kitchen all we want to, won’t it Mrs. Gray?”
“Use the kitchen, Geraldine?” The old lady could hardly believe that she
had heard aright. “I thought I once heard you say that you hoped you
would never have to step inside of a kitchen.”
The girl flushed, but she answered frankly: “You are right, I did! But
yesterday, when I saw those girls, all of them from nice families,
cooking such a very good meal, I felt sorry. Oh, more than that. I was
actually ashamed when Jack Lee asked me _which_ of the dishes _I_ had
prepared, and if someone hadn’t changed the subject, I would have felt
terribly humiliated to have had to confess that I couldn’t cook at all.”
A ray of light was penetrating the darkness for Mrs. Gray. Briskly she
replied: “I shall enjoy teaching you to cook, dearie, as I would a
granddaughter of my own.” Then Geraldine further surprised the old lady
by leading her to her seat and declaring that she would go down to the
kitchen and bring up the breakfast.
While they were eating it cosily in the sun-flooded room with snow
sparkling on window sill and icicle, Geraldine confided that she had
impulsively invited all of the girls and boys, who had been at Merry’s,
to a dinner party which she had said that _she_ would cook.
How Mrs. Gray laughed. “Good! Good!” she said. “I shall enjoy that. When
is it to be?”
“I thought I would like to have it on Doris Drexel’s birthday. That will
be in about two weeks.”
That very afternoon the lessons began. No one was in the secret except
the Colonel, and every day he drove to the seminary to get Geraldine that
she might reach home the sooner for the lesson in dinner preparing. The
girls wondered, especially when they were so eager to search for more
clues in their “Myra Mystery,” as Peg called it.
“What _are_ you up to?” Doris asked her at last. “_Why_ do you rush home
every day after school?”
“I believe she has a mystery of her own,” Betty Byrd teased.
Geraldine flashed a merry glance in the speaker’s direction. “Righto! I
have,” she confessed. “However, I am going to reveal it to you all at our
next meeting of the ‘S. S. C.’ Where is it to be?”
“At Bertha’s again. That is the most central place,” Merry told her.
“We’re all going to try to unearth something which will help solve the
‘Myra Mystery.’”
* * * * * * * *
When the girls met on the following Saturday afternoon, it was quite
evident that at least two of them could hardly wait for the formalities
to be over before they could reveal something of interest. The president,
being aware of this, said as soon as Sleuth Bertha had read the minutes
of the last meeting: “Geraldine and Doris look as though they would burst
if they didn’t tell us something. Have you both unearthed clues in the
Myra Mystery?”
But Gerry shook her head. “Nary a clue!” she confessed. “My news item is
far less interesting than that.”
Doris, on the edge of her chair, was waiting to speak, and when the
president nodded in her direction, she exclaimed: “Girls, Danny O’Neil’s
mother’s first name began with M. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if _she_
should have been that Myra Cornwall? Then Danny would own _her_ share of
the ranch. Of course he wouldn’t have to go out there to live, but he
could have the money it brings in for his art education.”
The girls, gazing at the flushed, eager face, wondered why Doris was so
greatly interested in the boy, but Bertha, the practical, asked: “Why
should you think that the initial M. would mean Myra? There are ever so
many Christian names beginning with that letter.”
“Oh, of course, I’m just grasping at a straw. I only learned about it
this morning. Mother had me go over a box of old receipts and throw out
many of them, and I found one from Danny’s mother signed merely ‘M.
O’Neil.’”
“That would be splendid!” Merry commented. “I _do_ wish we could find
that Myra, especially if she is someone in need, and then we would be
spreading sunshine as well as having a mystery club.”
“I’m going to see Danny tonight,” Doris told them. “Mother was so
interested in—in some carving that he did that she wants to meet him, and
so she had me invite him to supper.”
“You call us up as soon as you find out. We’ll be wild to know,” Merry
said; then turned toward Geraldine: “Now, may we hear _your_ news item?”
The city girl beamed on them. “I invited you all to a dinner party, you
remember, and told you that later I would let you know the date.”
“Oh, goodie!” Betty Byrd clapped her hands. “I adore parties. When is it
to be?”
Geraldine told them, and Doris said: “My birthday! I certainly appreciate
that.” What Gerry did not tell them was that _she_ was to cook every bit
of it. She had the menu all planned, except the dessert, and she wanted
that very afternoon to find out what Jack Lee liked best. To achieve this
she asked: “What do most boys like for dessert?” She looked at Bertha and
then at Rose, but just as she had hoped, Merry was one of the first to
reply: “Jack likes whipped-cream cake with banana filling best.” This
information was rapidly followed with other suggestions which Geraldine
scarcely heard.
The only dessert that she _cared_ to remember was the one that Jack
liked, and she could hardly wait for the Colonel to call for her that she
might go home and practice making one for the family’s Sunday dinner.
That night every member of the “S. S. C.” received a telephone call, and
the voice of Sleuth Doris regretfully told them that Danny’s mother’s
name was Martha O’Neil, and so the mystery was no nearer a solution than
it had been.