The secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

that my family moved up here. If they hadn’t, why, g-gosh, I might never have met you and Jim!"
     

Copperhead! • 5
     
    WHEN TRIXIE GOT home, she found her mother dressed for her Garden Club meeting in the village.
    "I’m leaving Bobby in your care," she said as she slid behind the wheel of the station wagon. "You might keep him with you while you do some weeding. Don’t forget to gather the eggs and throw out a canful of scratch for the chickens around five o’clock. Your father filled the mash hoppers this morning, but you had better check the water." She turned on the ignition. "I did the luncheon dishes and the dusting and made a big pitcher of lemonade. There are plenty of cookies in the crock. I thought you might like to have your new friend to tea."
    "Oh, Moms!" Trixie leaned into the car and kissed her mother swiftly. "You’re just wonderful. You think of everything." Thoughtfully, she watched the station wagon roll down the driveway under the arch of crabapple trees. "I’m the lucky duck, not Honey," she told herself. "I have what she calls ‘fun’ all the time. From now on, I’m going to work like a beaver to show Dad and Moms how glad I am I belong to them and not to Honey’s father and mother."
    Bobby began to wail then, as he always did when he woke up from his nap. Trixie raced upstairs and found him sprawled across his bunk, sleepily rubbing his eyes. "I’m too hot," he howled. "And I won’t wear oberalls. I wanna wear my bathing suit, and you squirt me with the hose."
    "I’ll squirt you later," Trixie said soothingly. "Come on, Bobby, I’ll help you with your overall straps and sandals."
    "Don’t wanna wear sandals," he said crossly, squirming away from her. "Wanna go barefoot."
    "All right," Trixie agreed, "but you’ve got to stay right with me in the garden, then. You can help me weed, and then, afterward, we can have lemonade and cookies out on the terrace."
    Bobby cheered up immediately. "I can weed, too," he announced as they walked across the lawn to the garden path. "Mummy showed me this morning which little plants were lamb’s-quarters and which ones were carrots." He grinned. "I picked an awful lot of carrots first before she ’splained to me."
    "You can pull up the purslane," Trixie told him. "They’re easy to pick and good to eat. Better than lettuce."
    "I won’t eat ’em," Bobby said firmly. " ’Member the time I ate poison ivy?"
    Trixie shuddered. Bobby had heard his older brothers saying that the Indians obtained immunity from poison ivy and poison sumac by chewing the leaves. He had been a very sick little boy for several days. "No, you’d better not eat anything," Trixie cautioned.
    " ’Cept lemonade and cookies," Bobby said as he raced ahead of her and tripped over the patch of exposed tree roots.
    "Oh, Bobby," Trixie cried impatiently. "Must you trip over roots every single time?"
    He scrambled to his feet and picked up his trowel and pail. "Not every single time," he said with injured pride. "Once I tripped over a big black snake, right here. He was so long," he said, stretching out his arms full length. "And he didn’t bite me, or anything."
    "Of course he didn’t bite you," Trixie replied. "Snakes don’t go around biting people." She hustled Bobby into the fenced-in garden and then closed the gate just in time to keep out Reddy, who liked nothing better than to run up and down the neat green rows in pursuit of an imaginary rabbit. Reddy sat outside the gate for a while and looked sulkily after them. Then he grew tired of waiting and set off in pursuit of a squirrel.
    Bobby promptly sat down on a carefully tied-up head of lettuce and announced that he was going to dig for worms instead of weeding. "You re worse than Reddy," Trixie scolded him as she moved him to the path. "Now, don t dig up anything except this purslane."
    Trixie noticed, then, that the tomato seedlings her mother had transplanted that morning were drooping sadly in the hot sun. These plants