The Desert Lake Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

Author:Kay Cleaver Strahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789129106
Publisher: Phocion Publishing
Published: 2019-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter XXII

If there is anything that makes a man who is behind on his sleep feel more resentful than waking up bright and early when there is nothing to wake up for, I don’t know what it is. That is what I did the next morning, Friday, and the pink ruffled bedroom curtains were the last touch. Not that pink ruffles aren’t pretty and romantic; just that no man on earth wants to wake up to them in the early morning.

Reggie, agog, was the first person I met when I stepped outside. After saying that he’d just had a splendid shower—he being the type of man who never takes a bath without talking about it—he sprang the other good news.

“Uncle Adam is going to take us all back to Hay Patch today. I’m so glad. Mummy’s so glad. Aren’t you glad? We are motoring over. We are all glad.”

I walked down to the lake where Brigid was swimming around, kind of half-heartedly. When she saw me she hollered for me to wait. I sat down and waited.

“Jeff,” she asked, while she was shaking the water out of her ears, “do you know what or how much Mayor Oakman knows?”

“You mean about all the goings-on over here?” I asked.

She just slumped her shoulders, pressed her lips together and looked at me.

“He was hinting around last night that he knew something,” I said. “But I doubt it like sixty.”

“What did he say?” she demanded. “Word for word?”

I told her how he’d said that I knew as well as he did what had happened and that no hue and cry would do any good now.

“Fine! Grand!” she said, leaning back and shaking her bright hair like it was a flag.

A man is hard to suit. I hadn’t liked it yesterday morning when all the folks had been so sad. I liked it less this morning when they seemed happy. I said so. I said I saw no reason for Reggie’s jumping up and down and clapping his hands, or for her celebrating something—I didn’t know what.

“I’m not either,” she said. “Here comes Mayor Oakman, the poor, sweet, precious old darling.” Adam came up to us just then asking hurriedly, “What is it? What’s the matter now, Jeff?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You looked stunned.”

“It was the language Brigid was using,” I said. “These modern girls,” he said, smiling a very little, and turning to her. “Run and get dressed, child. You’re going with the first load to Hay Patch.”

“Jeff hasn’t had his breakfast,” she objected, being nice that way sometimes. “I was going to get it for him.”

“Betty-Jean is getting breakfast for the Doctor in her cottage,” Adam said. “I told her to count Jeff and me in the pot. Run along, child. Come, Jeff, to breakfast. We haven’t much time, the Doctor is in a hurry as usual. You and I, Brigid and Mrs. Duefife are going with him in his car to Ferras. I’ll pick up my car there and take Brigid and Mrs.

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