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you,” she said and put a tray of hot dogs on an old trunk.
    “Tom is bringing the milk,” she added. “Bobby ishaving his lunch with Regan. If you need anything more,” she said to Jim, “just come down to the kitchen.”
    After they had finished their sandwiches they selected the articles they wanted to use.
    “Let’s carry this loot over to the clubhouse and get busy right away,” Mart said enthusiastically. “Diana, you and Trixie can start to sand one of the gate-leg tables when we get there. If they’re really cherry, we’ll get a neat price for them. Come on, girls. Each one take a cooky jar. Jim, a table for you, and you, Brian, the mirror. Wait till you see the mirror with a new coat of gilt on the frame. I’ll take the Indian.”
    Aside from the two gate-leg tables they took a tobacco shop Indian figure with some of its original paint, a Windsor armchair, a table that might turn out to be a Pembroke, a framed mirror, a brass coal hod, two brown crackled cooky jars, and a model of an old whaling ship, the
Oswego of Hudson
.
    They stopped in the Manor House living-room to thank Mrs. Wheeler.
    “Oh, that old stuff,” she said. “You’ll never find anyone who will want to buy it.”
    “You’d be surprised, Mrs. Wheeler,” Mart said. “I’d like to place a bet that you buy one of your own things back when you see our show.”
    “That would surprise me very much,” she said, laughing. “Is that an old Bennington jar you are carrying, Diana? I wonder where it came from.”
    “Do you see what I mean?” Mart asked impudently. “Do you want to buy it back now?”

Chapter 5
The Acrobatic Alphabet
    When Trixie and her brothers went home for dinner, they were dusty and tired. They were so excited, however, that words piled on top of one another when they tried to tell their mother and father what had happened at the Manor House, of the wonderful things they had found there.
    “That’s enough about your afternoon, now,” Mrs. Belden interrupted. “Take showers, all of you. Trixie, please help Bobby. Change to robes and slippers. You may eat your dinner in robes and get to bed early. Run along, now,” she insisted as they kept on talking. “When we are at dinner we can hear all about it.”
    Later, when they were at the table, and grace had been said, Bobby shouted, “I’m first! Regan told me a good riddle.”
    “Let’s hear it, son,” Mr. Belden said.
    “He told me two riddles,” Bobby said. “This is the funniest one. What has ten letters and starts with—what is it, Trixie?” Bobby asked.
    “It starts with G-A-S, remember?”
    “Oh, yes, what is it, Moms? Daddy? You give up?”
    Mr. Belden scratched his head and thought.
    Mrs. Belden put her head in her hands and thought.
    “We give up, Bobby,” they said.
    “Brian’s jalopy!” Bobby said triumphantly and laughed till he almost choked.
    “Bobby’s a clown,” Brian said. “The real answer is ‘automobile.’ Look here, Dad, at what I found in the attic.”
    Brian and Mart stood over their father’s chair while he examined the swords. “This one looks just like the one we saw in New York,” he said. “Yes, I think you made quite a find, Brian. Are you sure, you and Mart, that Mrs. Wheeler wanted to give them to you!”
    “Sure thing,” Mart answered. “She gave us some other keen things we found, too.” He told his parents about the beautiful cherry-wood tables.
    “I found a crazy-looking thing,” Trixie said and produced the key and the tag with its acrobatic figures.
    “It’s a code of some kind, I’m sure,” Mr. Belden said. “I think I saw something like it a long time ago.”
    “Can’t you possibly remember, Daddy?” Trixie asked. “Maybe it would tell us something important.”
    “It looks more to me like some child’s idea of a joke,” Mrs. Belden said. “It probably doesn’t mean a thing. AllTrixie needs,” she said to her husband, “is something like this to start her off with a