The Adventure of the Secret Necklace by Enid Blyton

Author:Enid Blyton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: juvenile, adventure, fiction
Publisher: Distributed Proofreaders Canada
Published: 1954-05-15T05:00:00+00:00

8. GRANNY SETS A FEW PUZZLES

The next day was dark and rainy. The sun was hidden behind thick clouds, and Granny wondered what to do with the children.

“I’ll set you a few puzzles,” she said. “And the prize shall be a box of chocolates. Here’s the first puzzle. Go into the dining-room, and have a good look round. Count all the clawed feet you can see there, and come back and tell me the number. Then I’ll set you a few more puzzles.”

“Oh, I know four clawed feet there!” said Ralph. “The stuffed fox!”

“Don’t give things away!” said Mary. They went into the dining-room and looked around. Yes—stuffed fox—and a stuffed hawk with clawed feet. And a picture of an owl, he had clawed feet too.

Bob noticed a little statue of a lion on the mantelpiece—four more clawed feet. He wondered if the others would notice it.

A bell rang after a time. That was to say they were to come back and report to Granny. “Well,” she said, when they arrived. “How many clawed feet did you see, Ralph?”

“I bet I got the most!” said Ralph. “I counted twelve—fox, owl, hawk and lion!”

“I got those twelve too,” said Bob.

“I got forty-four clawed feet!” said Mary, almost crowing in delight.

“You didn’t!” said Ralph. “What are they?”

“Lion, fox, owl, hawk—and the table has four clawed feet, and so have each of the chairs, and the sideboard!” said Mary.

“Right!” said Granny. “They are old chairs and table—the kind that have carved legs holding a ball in the claws of the foot. Well done, Mary.”

“Jolly good!” said Bob. “What’s the next puzzle, Granny?”

“Go into the drawing-room and count all the roses you can see,” said Granny. So off they ran.

“Fourteen roses in that vase—and sixteen in this one—and a rose embroidered on that cushion—and another on the fire-screen,” thought Mary. “Any on the carpet? No. Any on the curtains? No!”

They were soon back again. “Mary, how many?” said Granny.

“Thirty-two,” said Mary.

“Thirty-one,” said Ralph, who had counted the ones in the vases wrongly.

“Sixty-two!” said Bob, proudly. And he was right! “I looked up at the ceiling, Granny, and it had roses carved on it,” he explained. Granny nodded.

“Yes—those roses were carved long ago. You were clever to notice them. Now—one last puzzle. In the gallery upstairs there are portraits of six women who lived in the olden days—great-great-great-grandmothers of yours and mine. In five of their pictures appears the same thing. I want you to tell me what it is.”

The children ran off to the gallery. It was dark up there and Bob switched on the lights. The big portraits looked down on them from the walls, most of them dark and dingy for they were very old. There were both men and women, and the children picked out the six women and looked at them carefully.

“I know, I know!” cried Mary and ran downstairs to Granny. The two boys stared and stared at the six pictures but all the women in them wore different dresses, different collars, different cuffs.

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