Nancy paused. The girls were threatening to throw her over the bench into the flower bed but she seemed about ready to divulge the secret, so presently they desisted. "Well," she said, "Miss Townsend answered, 'Mr. Sanders lives right here in this hotel. He moved in yesterday and the poor man needed the change after all he's been through.' Now girls," pouted Nancy, "did you ever see anything as mean as that? Just when I'm free to dig up the wild and woolly mystery, our hero goes and rents a room in the Waterfall House," and she affected a pose intended to excite pity, but in reality causing mirth. "I see it all!" cried Isabel, jumping up on the bench and laying a sprawled hand over the heart location. "All, girls, all." Her voice was droning like a school boy reciting the Charge of the Light Brigade. "What happened was this!" "This!" interrupted Ruth, pinching Isabel's ankles until she literally fell from her perch. "Whow!" yelled Isabel. "Can't one elocute without being plucked by cruel hands? I tell you, girls, we have lost a lot of fun in not keeping up with our little brothers." This was said in a very different and quite serious tone. "If you were to ask Ted, Nancy, very confidentially, what is or was the secret of the hidden treasure place, I'm almost sure he would tell you. He _knows_!" she declared loudly, "and so does my brother Gerard know, but _he_ won't tell me." "Then it is or was a question of hiding a treasure," reflected Nancy. "I'm so sorry it is only that. I perfectly hate treasure mysteries, they're so horribly common. I had in mind some sort of great, grand, spooky, now-you-see-me and now-you-don't trick. That would have been heaps more fun than just the old hidden treasure business. Well, at any rate, _we_ seem to have missed it, for Mr. Sanders is really living at the hotel," she wound up finally. "Is that any reason why we shouldn't find out the secret?" demanded Ruth. "It seems to me we would be better able to do so, now that every one else has suddenly grown rich, and there's no more danger of getting folks into trouble by prying into their business. I just wish Sibyl Sanders would come up again. I fancy she would be just tickled to tell us the whole thing," declared Ruth. "I must trot along," Nancy suddenly announced. "And girls, please don't forget about the first lesson in domestic science, to be held at the residence of--" A loud and insistent honking of a motor horn interrupted Nancy's flattering announcement, and presently all three girls were scampering down to the roadside to pile into Gerard's Duryea car, for Isabel's brother was taking them for a ride into town, ostensibly to do some important family errands, but really to have one of those unplanned jolly times that go to make up the happy summer time. "I must be back by five," warned Nancy. But her companions only pushed her back further in the over crowded car-seat as they sailed along. CHAPTER XVI