s,"
she hurried to explain, "in fact I have many named, and they are my
very own, but just yet I would not risk letting people know we have
them."

"Oh," said Grace so simply, and so softly that the expression might
have been an echo from the sigh of a passing summer breeze.

"But the queer wild bushes and things all growing around the windows?"
asked Madaline. "Why do you have them near the glorious orchids?"

"Grandie thinks they are a protector. You can only see them when you
look in through the glass, and so no one would ever guess they really
hide orchids," Mary explained.

"And that is why you get all the wild roots from the fields?" Grace
exclaimed, delighted to have solved that much of the mystery.

"Yes, that is partly the reason, but Grandie makes a fine fertilizer
out of the roots, also. You see our beauties are very tender, and must
have special heat and special nourishment."

"And how will you know your house is safe while you are away?" pressed
Cleo.

"Of course we don't know," Mary replied, "but there wasn't anything
else to do. I feel you girls have done it all. I have been such a
baby and, as Reda always insisted, I have seemed half asleep. But
honestly, girls," and again Mary pulled them up to a standstill in
their walk, so that her remarks would not possibly go astray. "I am
like someone who really was asleep, and was just waking up. At least
that is the way I feel."

"And you are getting such a lovely color," Grace complimented. "Even
if things did get stolen from your house for want of caretakers it
seems to me worth while for you and the professor to grow strong,"
declared the practical little scout.

"It is, indeed," agreed Mary. "You really can't know how much it means
just yet. Secret!" she called out, inaugurating Cleo's idea of
avoiding the forbidden topic by giving the cry of warning.

They all joined in the laugh that followed, and when they took to the
road that slanted down over Second Mountain like an inclined pole, they
trotted along, almost running down the steep grade.

"We ought to have brakes to go down here safely," said Cleo. "But I do
love to run down a big, high hill. Let's!"

"I'll race you," challenged Madaline, and the words were no more than
uttered when the four girls dashed off, throwing back shoulders and
bracing heads high to avoid rolling "head over heels" down the steep
mountain road.

Past the vineyard, past the quarry pole, and still on p