The Riddle Club through the holidays

As this queer animal flopped about, muffled cries and shouts came from it. Dancing around it were four little figures in the wildest state of excitement.

“Here, here, what’s all this?” asked Mr. Williamson. “You’ll have the whole town here in another minute. What’s that on the ground?”

“Fred!” said Margy.

“Artie!” cried Polly.

“Joe Anderson and Albert Holmes,” piped out Ward.

“Well, we’ll see if we can sort them out,” said Mr. Williamson, who seemed to understand.

He grasped a kicking leg and Mr. Marley caught a waving arm. As for Mr. Larue, he took a whole handful of spots, and that proved to be most of Joe Anderson.

As soon as the boys stopped twisting and turning, they found they were not so badly mixed as they had thought. They climbed out of their wrappings, a little the worse for wear, but not much.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you?” growled Joe Anderson.

“The hose twisted,” explained Fred, with a grin. “Bet you were scared.”

“My mother will be as mad—as mad—as anything!” sputtered Albert Holmes. “She told me not to take her sheets and pillow case, and now look at them!”

Alas, for Mrs. Holmes’ good sheet and linen pillow case—they were covered with dirt and torn in many places.

“Next time,” said Fred, significantly, “don’t come to a party you’re not invited to.”

“I don’t think that’s called for, Fred,” said his father, quietly. “Go on back into the house and have your fun there. If you think you’ll be likely to rouse the neighborhood again, one of us will stay, too; otherwise we’d like to go back and finish our own party.”

“We’ll be all right,” declared Fred, hastily, and the others echoed his assurance.

Mr. Williamson waited till he had seen Joe Anderson and Albert well up the street on their way home, and then he and the other two fathers went back to the Larue house.

“Perhaps,” said Artie, as the girls and boys found themselves in the kitchen again, “we’d better not try any more stunts outdoors.”

“Huh, they won’t bother us again—you see if they do!” said Fred, but Polly and Margy wouldn’t hear of any more trips to the garden.

“Anyway, it’s time we had the eats,” declared Margy, wisely.

She knew the boys could never resist that suggestion, and, sure enough, as she brought out the plates of sandwiches and doughnuts and the little pumpkin tarts Mrs. Williamson had left for them, no one had to be dragged to the table. There was milk to drink, and afterward they popped corn and buttered and ate it. They were surprised when Mr. and Mrs. Williamson walked in and announced that it was ten o’clock and time for all parties to be over.

“I promised your mothers that you’d come home at once,” said Mrs. Williamson, so there was no excuse for lingering.

In school the next day, Albert Holmes was not exactly pleasant—his mother had been much “put out” because of the damage done her linen, and Albert persisted in blaming the Riddle Club members for this damage. Joe Anderson spread the report that Fred had nearly broken his arm. He allowed his listeners to infer that Fred had attacked him, but most of the boys and girls were too well acquainted with Joe to believe that all the blame could be on one side.

“I’ll be glad when it gets real cold,” said Carrie Pepper to her chum, Mattie Helms. “I hope we have snow up to the windows of the houses and tons and tons of ice.”

“Yes,” said Mattie. “I like to go skating, too. But I can’t skate very well. My ankles are weak.”

“Who said anything about ice skating?” demanded Carrie.

“Well, you were talking about ice,” retorted Mattie.

“I was thinking about the Riddle Club,” said Carrie. “If it will only get good and cold, they won’t be able to have their silly old meetings.”

“I don’t see why,” remarked Mattie, wondering what the weather had to do with club meetings.

“You would, if you’d do some thinking,” said her chum. “When it gets too cold to meet in the barn, where’ll they go?”

“Oh, around to different houses, I suppose,” answered Mattie. “They’ll do the way we do.”

“Polly Marley won’t let ’em,” was Carrie’s reply to this. “She doesn’t like going around to different places to meet. I’ve often heard her say so. And if they don’t meet in the barn, they won’t meet anywhere. Then, perhaps, we’ll get a little peace. I do get so sick,” added Carrie, “of hearing about that old Riddle Club.”

“So do I,” Mattie responded. “You’d think they had the only club in River Bend, to hear ’em talk.”

The question of where they should hold their club meetings in cold weather was also puzzling Polly. She knew the answer to the puzzle would have to come from her. Margy would be the first to complain of the discomfort of the cold barn, but the last to suggest another meeting place. Jess was hardy and would cheerfully endure a red nose and cold hands before she would take the trouble to move. As for the boys, they naturally expected Polly to think things over and work plans out, and while they would fall in with her suggestions, it was useless to look to them for ideas.

November came in cold and gray and the month was not six days old before the citizens of River Bend looked out one morning to find feathery flakes floating in the air. Fathers thought of their coal-bins and children of their sleds, but Polly’s thoughts flew to the clubroom in the Larue barn. A meeting of the Riddle Club was scheduled for the next day.

“Gee, isn’t it cold!” cried Artie as he and Polly started for school.

They met Jess and Ward and the Williamson twins—as usual—and the bitter cold wind that stung their faces came straight from the river.

“I read where a man said this is going to be the coldest winter we’ve ever had,” related Artie, opening and closing his fingers rapidly in their woolen gloves to keep the blood circulating.

“Well, it’s cold enough right now,” declared Ward. “Of course, I like snow and skating, but I’d rather have the mornings nice and warm.”

Fred laughed.

“You’d fix it up so we’d go to school with steam-heated overcoats and shoes, wouldn’t you, Ward?” he teased. “And then, the moment school closed, you’d have a nice glassy hill back right up to the door with a sled on top ready to take you coasting.”

Ward admitted that he had something like that in mind.

“What are you thinking about, Polly?” asked Margy, curiously. “You haven’t said a word for the last five minutes.”

“I’m wondering what we are going to do about the clubroom,” answered Polly. “To-morrow it’s going to be as cold as ice in the barn. We haven’t done a thing about heating it, either, except talk about it.”

“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have an oil stove,” declared Fred, positively. “That won’t cost much, and we can take turns filling it.”

“Daddy says that we can’t have any kind of a heater in the barn,” said Jess, mournfully. “He says the most careful children in the world could burn a barn down without knowing they were doing it.”

“Well, the only thing I see to do, then,” said Polly, “is to wrap up extra warm. We can’t freeze solid in an hour or two.”

“No, but I have a little cold now,” objected Margy, “and I don’t believe Mother will want me to stay in that cold barn. You can’t be too careful when you have a little cold.”

“You say you have a cold,” declared Fred, with brotherly frankness, “because you want an excuse for borrowing one of Mother’s good handkerchiefs and putting her new cologne on it.”

Margy looked at him reproachfully, but forebore to argue.

All through the morning session Polly studied the problem of a meeting place. That is, when she was not reciting. She racked her mind to think of somewhere they could go, but without success. As Carrie Pepper had shrewdly said, she was not willing to “meet around” at the houses of the various members. For one thing, Polly knew that this plan usually meant extra work and trouble for the mothers.

“We might not always put everything back in place,” reasoned Polly. “And the boys are so hard on chairs and furniture. They don’t mean to be, but they can’t help it. With our own furniture, it doesn’t matter, but just suppose Artie should put his feet on those new satin chairs Mrs. Larue just had sent home! And if we had anything to eat, I’d want to run the carpet sweeper over the rug afterward, because I just know there would be crumbs spilled.”

Then she was called on to go to the blackboard, and it was twenty minutes before she had a chance to tackle the problem again.

“Oh, dear, it is really trying to snow,” said Polly to herself, glancing from the window as she walked back to her seat. “I hoped maybe the sun would come out and make it warmer. I don’t see what we’re going to do with all our lovely things, if we can’t meet in the barn any longer.”

Polly meant the treasures the Riddle Club had gathered from various sources, some by dint of wheedling from parents who had furniture stored in attics, some from friends made in camp, and some—best of all—won as trophies.

“What are you going to do about the Riddle Club?” Carrie Pepper asked unexpectedly that noon.

She and Mattie were walking behind Polly and Jess and Margy.

“Do about it?” repeated Polly, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, that barn will be like an icebox now,” said Carrie. “I was just wondering if you were going to give up having meetings till spring. It might not be such a bad plan—Miss Elliott said the other day that nothing ought to be allowed to interfere with our lessons.”

“The Riddle Club doesn’t interfere with our lessons,” replied Polly, coldly. “We agreed to stay away from meetings if our marks went below the average. Mr. Williamson suggested that. But we have good report cards every time—isn’t that so, Jess?”

Jess nodded. Carrie always made her feel tongue-tied.

“Well, our Conundrum Club is going to hold a meeting to-morrow, at Joe Anderson’s house,” said Carrie. “And his mother is going to give us hot cocoa and whipped cream and cake. We most always have something to eat in cold weather.”

Margy looked at Polly as Carrie turned in at her gate.

“Whatever we do, we won’t give up our club,” said Margy.

“Of course we won’t,” promised Polly.

Artie had an important appointment with Ward before the afternoon session of school—they each had three cents left over from their hoard carefully saved for the club dues, which Fred was sure to collect the next day—and he went back before Polly. When she reached school, five minutes before the one o’clock bell, her eyes were bright with excitement.

“Something—nice—to—tell—you,” she whispered across the room to Margy, as the bell clanged and the pupils took their seats. This year, much to the three girls’ delight, Margy had her seat in the same room as Jess and Polly, though they did not recite together in all their classes.

All that afternoon Polly fairly glowed. Her eyes twinkled and nothing could ruffle her good nature, not even missing a fairly easy word in spelling, which Carrie immediately spelled after her.

“Get the boys,” she commanded Margy, as they struggled into their coats in the cloakroom. “I have the best news in the world to tell you!”