LITMIR.BIZ

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saw a big red car in your yard,” he went on. “A man got out and went up on your porch. I saw him from my back field. He peeked in the windows for a long time. Tried the door, too.”

      He paused, giving both children a penetrating stare as if trying to find out what effect his story was having on them. They waited uneasily. Margie wanted to turn and run, but it was clear that the old man wasn’t quite done with what he had to say.

      “Your folks know anybody with a big, long, red car like that?” he demanded, his eyes not moving from their faces.

      Margie’s mind raced hurriedly over the friends and aunts and uncles who sometimes came to visit at their house. None of them had big, expensive cars. Most of them had jeeps or trucks or well-worn old Fords and Chevvies.

      “We don’t know anybody with a fancy car like that,” Neale answered.

      The old man nodded again. “Didn’t think it was folks of yours.”

      He closed his screen door and moved back into his kitchen, mumbling something the children couldn’t make out. “Same red car—no way to act—”

      Margie’s brown eyes were like saucers and her words tumbled over each other, as she and Neale walked off. “What was he talking about? Why should it matter to him if somebody stopped at our house?”

      Neale’s voice was thoughtful. “I wonder who the man in the red car could have been. It seems queer for a stranger to peer in our windows and try our door when nobody was home.”

      “Daddy and Mamma will probably know who it could have been,” Margie said. “But I can’t see why Mr. Willey was so excited about it.”

      “Mr. Willey is acting mighty strange, lately,” Neale said. “Last night I went down to the shore to take a ride on Firefly, and when I started back to the house it was almost dark. Just as I got to the bridge I saw Mr. Willey standing in the brook, staring at the bridge. He didn’t say a word. He just kept nodding his head, the way he did tonight, as if he was satisfied about something. I was so surprised I—well, I ran all the way to the house.”

      “Standing in the brook?” Margie gasped. “It’s a good thing it was you who saw him there. I would have screamed. What could he have been doing?”

      Neale shrugged his shoulders. “Search me!”

      They puzzled about the old man’s strange behavior while they climbed the long hill toward Joe’s Diner. Far below them, the waters of Shadow Pond glimmered like liquid silver in the dusk, and hundreds of fireflies twinkled over the nearby fields. At the top of the hill the red and blue neon signs of the diner lighted the roadway.

      “Just the same,” Margie said finally, “there can’t be anything really bad about Mr. Willey. Grampa wouldn’t have been so friendly with him if there had been. Remember how they used to play checkers together? Grampa always said he was a good, honest man who never hurt anyone but himself with his queer ways.”

      Neale’s voice sounded doubtful. “Maybe he’s changing. Maybe he’s getting more queer as he grows older.”

      Joe had no customers in the diner when the children entered. He was busily polishing his gleaming counters, and he greeted them with a loud, “Hi, Neale, hi, Margie, how’s everything? I suppose you feel real bad that school’s closed down for the summer!”

      While Neale picked out a loaf of bread Joe grinned at Margie. “What are you going to do with yourself this vacation? Want to come up here and cook for me?”

      Margie’s lightly freckled cheeks flushed and her brown eyes snapped. She tossed her head so her golden pigtails bounced against her shoulders. Joe always loved to tease her. She knew he liked to hear her words tumble over each other when she got excited, so she closed her lips tightly and let Neale do the talking.

      When they started to leave Joe said, “Oh, by the way, there was an important-looking man in here yesterday asking about you folks. He drove up in a great big red Cadillac. He wanted to know if the Lawsons still lived on that farm at the foot of the hill. I told him your whole family was away at the school program, but he drove down toward your house just the same. He seemed mighty anxious to find you.”

      Margie’s dark eyes looked so startled that Joe added, “Don’t get scared, Margie. No matter what you’ve done, it wasn’t the state police nor the sheriff, after you, I’m sure of that.”

      “I’m not scared!” Margie flashed indignantly, forgetting her determination not to let Joe make her talk.

      They heard his delighted laugh as they closed the door behind them.

      “Who could that stranger have been?” Margie wondered aloud. “I don’t see why he should peek in our windows and try our door, the way Mr. Willey said he did, when Joe had already told him we weren’t home.”

      “He asked for us by name, so he can’t be a stranger,” Neale reminded her. “Maybe he’s a long-lost uncle or something. Let’s hurry home and ask Mamma and Daddy about him!”

      CHAPTER 2

      Grampa’s Secret

      They burst into the house so red of face and breathless that their mother and father were startled. Daddy turned off the TV news broadcast and listened to their excited account of the man Mr. Willey and Joe had seen.

      “A stranger in a red Cadillac?” he repeated. “Golly, I don’t know anyone with a car like that.”

      He turned toward Mamma, who was staring thoughtfully at the children.

      “I wonder—” she said. She paused a moment, looking at Daddy with a very meaningful glance. “The Rumford paper came out yesterday. Do you suppose somebody saw—?”

      Daddy shook his head warningly, and put a finger on his lips.

      “Saw what?” Neale demanded.

      Mamma laughed. “Oh, nothing, Neale. Just a foolish idea I had.”

      Daddy said hastily, “I think the stranger must have been a summer visitor. Maybe he is going to stay at a cottage on the pond and wants to buy vegetables from us.”

      Margie looked suspiciously from one parent to the other. Mamma certainly had been going to say something about the stranger that Daddy didn’t want her and Neale to hear. What could it have been? Before she could explain how awful it was to leave them wondering instead of telling them the truth about the mystery, Mamma got up.

      “There’s some lemon sherbet in the refrigerator,” she said. “I’ll get it. And after that, it will be bedtime for you children.”

      While Mamma was out in the kitchen Daddy turned the talk away from the stranger in the red car to thoughts of the vacation days ahead.

      Neale still felt gloomy about the summer, with his friend Jimmy away and Grampa gone. “But at least I’ve got Firefly,” he said. “As long as I have that good little horse to ride, I guess I’m luckier than almost any other kids.”

      “We’ve got our rowboat, too,” Margie reminded him. “And our own beach for swimming.”

      A shadow passed over Daddy’s face. For a moment he was silent. Then, speaking a little heavily, he asked, “You can’t really do much riding on Firefly, can you? With that lame leg of his, he can’t go fast. And you have to stay right in that one small field.”

      The children stared at him in amazement. The world seemed to be turning upside down when, instead of encouraging them to be cheerful about what they had, Daddy tried to make them feel dissatisfied.

      “Firefly goes fast enough!” Neale declared. “We’ve taken every little rock and root out of his field and he knows he won’t stumble.”

      “It’s so pretty there, with the grass all green and level, and the pond and the mountains so blue all around. It’s lots more fun riding there than along the road,” Margie added.

      Daddy’s

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