  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. |
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