The two weeks’ vacation, which usually came at Easter time, had been postponed until May, the reason being that Mrs. Martin wished to visit Washington for a fortnight and attend the wedding of a favorite niece.

There was great excitement among the girls whose homes were not far away, as they packed their suitcases; often skipping from one room to another to tell some joyous plan they had in store for them. The brother of Dicky Taylor had written of a jolly house party they were to have in their summer home. “Mother is going with us and all of our eight cousins, so you can just bank on a dandy time.”

Then there was a postscript. “Mums said for you to bring along the twins, if you wish, and that will make ten. They’ll keep things lively.”

“Your Buddy.”

Cora and Dora were indeed more pleased with this invitation than Dicky was. “It’s a curious thing,” she confided to Virginia. “Last year I just begged Mumsie to let me bring the Crowell girls home for the spring vacation and she said, ‘Some other time, dear.’ Mums has remembered her promise and now I’d heaps rather have you or some of your crowd. I still like the twins, but their antics don’t amuse me the way they did last year. I seem to have outgrown them, just as one does—well—dolls and toys.”

“I understand, dear,” the older girl said. “But suppose you think of it in a different way. Cora and Dora have had no home-life, I understand, since they were babies and that was too long ago for them to remember. They have been kept summer and winter in Vine Haven Seminary since they were four, and I am sure a fortnight in a real home will give them more happiness than it could any of the rest of us.”

“I know it will,” Dicky agreed brightly, “and I’ll try to think of it that way. Their father-professor never pays them any real attention. When he does come to see them during the Sunday afternoon visiting hour, he always tells them about his scientific discoveries. Dora declares she feels smothered when he is gone.”

Great was the hustle and bustle, as the hour approached for the bus to take the first load of pupils to the station. The five girls whose homes were too far away to be visited for so short a vacation, were on the front porch to wave good-by to those who were departing.

“I say but I’m sorry for you, old dears!” Cora put her head out of a window of the retreating bus to call.

“Don’t cry your eyes out with loneliness for us.” Dora’s merry face appeared beside that of her twin.

“We’ll try to endure the separation,” Betsy Clossen replied. Then as the stage was too far away for further conversation, even though carried on in shouting voices, the six girls on the porch turned and looked at one another.

“Well, we’re here because we’re here,” Babs sang out. “Now the next thing is, what shall we do to while away the tedium (as the story books say), of the next two weeks?”

“With all of the teachers gone, like mice of fiction, we ought to do very much as we wish.” Betsy swung herself up on the rail of the porch.

“I’m so glad Miss Torrence’s mother was strong enough to ride in that comfortable closed car of her brother’s to visit his nice home in Boston. She has three little grandchildren there and she has been so eager to see them.” Virginia had seated herself on the top step of the wide front porch, and, leaning back, she breathed deeply of the warm fragrance-laden air.

“What a glorious day it is!” she said, smiling up at Margaret who stood at her side. “Do see our wonderful apple orchard. Isn’t it just like a floating cloud of blossoms? I don’t wonder that birds like to build their nests in those great old branches, Hark! Hear one of them singing as though he would burst his throat and just for the joy of living.”

“Oh, good! Here comes the postman.” Sally who had been sitting on the step lower than her idol, looked up glowingly.

A two-wheeled cart was turning in between the high gates and a thin, wiry horse was drawing the queer little equipage up the wide circling drive, in what the girls thought a most provoking leisurely manner.

The pleasant-faced postman beamed out from under his leather visor. “What, ho!” he called, when the horse had stopped under the portico. “Be you all that’s left out of the hurly-burly crowd of you?”

The girls trooped down the steps and surrounded the vehicle. Babs climbed up on the small step to peer into the opened bag, while Betsy attempted to leap up on the back board from the ground.

“Yes, we’re all that’s left and we need twice as many letters to console us,” she remarked, when the feat had been accomplished.

“Wall, it does seem like thar’s an extra big batch this here mornin’. Where’s that Miss King, teacher, who allays takes the mail pouch. I’ve orders, you know, to just give it to her or her representative. That’s what Mis’ Martin said, slow-like and plain as anything. Now what I’m wantin’ to know, is any of you gals that representative?”

It was easy to see that the elderly rural postman was proud of his ability to use that word of many syllables.

At that moment, Mrs. Dorsey, the general housekeeper of the school appeared. “Just fetch that pouch right in here, Mr. Peters. I’ll appoint Virginia Davis as mail custodian until Miss King gets back, so hereafter, if I’m not handy to find, just give it to her.”

The elderly man climbed the steps of the porch and there deposited the pouch. Virginia looked up at the open door to ask Mrs. Dorsey if she wished to sort the contents, but that middle-aged woman had bustled away, for, during vacation, the cook and maid had been permitted to leave, and so Mrs. Dorsey was busy preparing the lunch.

“Well, Virg, I guess it’s up to you to do the honors.” Betsy, kneeling down, opened the pouch and peered within, as she chanted:

“Leather bag, what do you hold?
Messages more dear than gold?”

Whirling, she pointed at Babs, who, knowing what was expected, quickly said:

“Leather bag, please yield for me
A letter from my brother P.”

Turning quickly, she pointed at Margaret.

That maiden actually blushed. She had been wishing that the bag would contain a letter, all for her very own self from her guardian, Malcolm Davis whom she greatly admired, but she would not put this in a rhyme, and so she said:

“Leather bag, surely you’ve guessed,
I want a letter from the West.”

Then she pointed at Sally:

“Leather bag, please give to me
A letter from someone over the sea.”

The other girls looked their puzzled surprise at this request, as they had never heard that Sally had relations on the other side of the ocean.

“Suffering cats, Sally! You don’t mean you wish you could have a letter from Donald Dearing, do you? He has gone to France to be with his dad, and whose photograph you used to have.”

The pretty girl’s denial was vehement. “Not at all,” she declared. “I had to have something to rhyme with me and so I said sea.”

Eleanor was saying with an eagerness that could not be hidden:

“Leather bag, more than any other,
Give me a letter from my mother.”

“Betsy, for cricket’s sake, don’t begin that Round Robin Rhyme game again when we are in such a terrific hurry, because, according to its rule, we can’t do anything else until it’s been around.”

Virginia, having emptied the pouch, lifted a packet of letters. “Most of these seem to be for Mrs. Martin. I’ll put them in on her desk,” she said, suiting the action to the word.

Another pack was taken from the pouch. “Gimme one. Please, gimme one!” Betsy and Babs clamored with hands outstretched.

“Well, here is one for Miss Barbara.”

“Hurray, it’s from Peyton!” that maiden squealed. Adding, “Betsy, that rhyme must have been magic, for, see, I got just what I wished for.”

But there was no letters at all for Margaret, but there was a very plump one from the West for Virginia. Too, there was a foreign looking envelope addressed to Eleanor Burgess, and Sally received a letter from her doting mother.

The empty pouch was hung in its customary place by the door of the principal’s office, for, into it, all outgoing letters were to be dropped. Then, on the day following, when Mr. Peters brought more mail, he would take that pouch from its hook and start the letters on their journeys to widely separated destinations.

Eleanor, who was eager to be all alone when she read this pen-visit from her mother, excused herself and went down the steps and sat on a rustic bench in the blossoming orchard.

Sally and Betsy went to their own Sweet Pickle Alley, while the other three girls sauntered down toward the cliff to read the letter from the desert. Although there was no especially exciting news either from Peyton or Malcolm, it meant much to those three girls to be transported even in imagination to V. M. ranch.

When the letters had been read, they sat in a row on the top of the steep cliff gazing down at the even roll of the waves far beneath them, for, as the tide was low, the surf was not crashing against the rocks.

Suddenly there was a growling noise in the underbrush back of them.

They all looked around almost startled, but it was Betsy Clossen’s mischievous face that peered out at them.

The girls sprang up and surrounded the bushes. Sally was also there in hiding. “It’s nearly lunch time,” Betsy announced. “Come on, let’s get Eleanor and storm the kitchen. Mrs. Dorsey likes me, and I’m going to ask her to let me have two helpings of dessert.”

The five girls had started walking slowly back toward the orchard. “She will probably refer the matter to Virginia,” Margaret said, to tease.

Eleanor looked up from the bench, where she was seated, when she heard merry voices nearing. Her eyes were aglow with happiness. “Girls,” she cried. “Think of it! Mother-mine is now so well and strong that she can walk miles and feel no especial fatigue.” Then, she added, as she joined them, “Poor little mother has had one real disappointment. She was so in hopes that when she reached the land across the sea, she might hear something of her sister Dorinda, or of her son. She did learn that my aunt’s husband died many years ago, but that was merely from a report about foreign missionaries. It made no mention of the wife or son. Of course mother is the guest of Mrs. Warren and so she cannot visit the places where her sister’s husband had lived. If only we could find the fortune which my grandfather Burgess hid, then mother would never have to work any more and she could search the world over for her lost sister.”

“What?” Betsy leaped forward, her very expression an interrogation. “Is there a fortune hidden around here somewhere? Lead me to the place and I’ll dig it up.”

The others laughed. “So would we all, if we knew the place.”

“Say, that would be a spiffy way to spend this two weeks’ vacation. Let’s hunt for Captain Burgess’ buried treasure.”

“It would be a waste of time,” Eleanor said. “Mother, of course, has had experts search for it, and the final decision was that Grandfather was wandering in his mind when he wrote that and that he had hidden nothing at all.”

“Another fond hope blasted,” Betsy, the would-be detective said with so comically dismal an expression that the others laughed.

Then, just as they were about to enter the basement door, she whirled to announce: “Well, upon this much I am determined. Since we are members of The Adventure Club, we are going to start out this afternoon in search of an adventure.” They were all amused by Betsy’s nonsense, though they little dreamed that a real adventure awaited them that very afternoon.