The Orchard Secret Part 39

"And to think," murmured Sim, "I wanted to leave it!"

"Oh, well," said Terry, "I can understand. I'd have done the same thing if I was as crazy as you are, Sim, about being an expert swimmer and diver. You couldn't help it."

The girls lapsed into silence and looked at the gray stone buildings standing so bravely in the gleam of the red sun. The chapel spire seemed to pierce the blue sky and the white clouds now beginning to be tinted with rainbow colors. Bordmust Hall seemed to peer shyly at the departing girls from its distant hill. In the window of his official manse, Dr.

Bordmust, recovering from his injury, looked out of a window near which he was propped up and smiled.

The girls waved friendly hands at him, and he waved in return.

"A jolly gentleman, after all," commented Terry.

"We must call on him when we come back," suggested Arden.

"I suppose we will be coming back," murmured Sim.

"Of course!" exclaimed Arden. "We're going to have a lot more adventures at Cedar Ridge."

"But I doubt if any will be like the ones we've just finished," laughed Terry.

That remains to be seen. And those who are curious to learn may do so in the next book of this Arden Blake mystery series. It will be ent.i.tled _The Mystery of Jockey Hollow_.

The girls walked on.

"Look!" Sim suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the swimming pool soon to be repaired. Its windows were a glory of red and gold from the setting sun.

"It's doing its best to announce the fact that it will no longer be a despised vegetable cellar. Oh, girls, I'm so happy!"

"So say we all of us!" chanted Arden.

The puffing train came at last and stood at the station, panting for breath, it seemed, as if to get up courage to take away so many happy, laughing, chattering, and joy-bubbling students. As it pulled out of the station along a row of bare trees, the three freshmen of 513 had a glimpse of the stone deer of the campus looking at them with startled eyes.