s. "Now
just what do you mean by that?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing, nothing at all. It's getting so I can't say a word around here
without you suspecting some sort of a catch in it," her brother
complained. He shifted the drawing-board Rod had fixed up for him an
inch or two. Although Val's arm was at last out of the sling, he was not
supposed to use it unless absolutely necessary.

"Well, after that afternoon when you made the missing heir appear like a
rabbit out of a hat--" began his sister.

"Rod," Val called down to where their cousin was busied over the
stretching of the new badminton net, "did you hear that? She referred to
you as a rabbit--deliberately."

"Hm-m," Rod answered in absent-minded fashion. "That cat of Miss
Charity's just walked away with one of those feathered things yo' bat
'round."

"Let us hope that he returns it in time," Val said; "otherwise I can
prophesy that you are going to spend the rest of the morning crawling
around under hedges and things hunting for him and it. Ricky will not be
balked. If she says that we are going to play badminton--well, we are
going to play badminton."

"I think that you might help too." Ricky attacked a fresh pod viciously
as their cousin came up on the terrace. He stopped for a moment by
Ricky's chair, long enough to gather the pods together on the paper she
had put down for them, piling them up in a more orderly fashion than she
was capable of.

"Doing what?" Val inquired. "You know that Lucy has chased everyone out
of the house. And now that Rod has finished setting out the lawn sports,
what is there left to do? By the way, did Sam mend that croquet mallet,
the one with the loose head?"

"The one that you broke hitting the stone with when you aimed at your
ball yesterday?" she asked sweetly. "Yes, I saw to that this morning."

"Then what more is there to worry about? Let the party begin." Val
reached for his box of pencils.

That afternoon promptly at three-thirty the Ralestones of Pirate's Haven
were going to give their first party. They had lived, eaten, and slept
with the idea of a party for the past week until Rupert rebelled and
disappeared for the morning, taking Charity with him. He declared before
he left that the house was no longer habitable for anyone above the
mental level of a party-mad monomaniac, a statement with which Val
privately agreed. But Ricky did trap him before he got the roadster out
and made him promise to bring hom