ef; she has
dressed all up in her nicest things. Let's see if she has taken her
bag."

Opening a small door off the hall, opposite the sinister glass portal,
Mary entered a sleeping room profusely trimmed up with the brightest of
chintz draperies and colorful hangings.

"Yes, her bag is also gone. Well, girls," and Mary turned to them with
a frank smile, "I did like Reda, of course, but sometimes she has
frightened me so, and then Janos was so awfully rough with dear
Grandie."

"But whatever will you do without a housekeeper?" asked Cleo.

"I don't know really"--and she blinked threateningly--"but at any rate
I am glad to be free!"

A sense of security had now come to the girls, and they were flitting
around, looking at this thing and that, quite as if they had just
stepped into some attractive shop to inspect its wares. But they did
not go near the leaded glass door!

"Now, girls," Mary called quite soberly, emerging from Reda's room, "I
am going to give you a real treat. Just watch."

She sprang to the big glass door and, pressing the set in the lock, the
portal slid smoothly back.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" The exclamation was a soft cadenza, uttered by all
three spectators.

The open door revealed a glorious collection of blooming orchids!

CHAPTER XV

ORCHIDIA

"Oh, how perfectly gorgeous!" This a solo from Grace.

"Heavenly, I think!" Cleo chimed in.

"Wherever did you get them all?" asked Grace.

Like a little floral queen, Mary ushered her visitors into this
mysterious room, the orchid sanctum of Professor Benson. It was all
that the girls had proclaimed it, gorgeous, heavenly and wonderful!
The variegated tones of lavendar, known only as orchid, were as elusive
as the subtle scent of this tropical bloom. The whole diffusing into
something so indescribable that even the spontaneous girls failed for
once to rally immediately to a sense of reality. It seemed like a
dream, like a picture book, or even a wonderful pastel!

Never before had Mary's quaint personality seemed so well set as she
flitted about, bringing her face down to the affectionate shade of
flower upon flower, yet never touching with so much as a finger tip the
perishable bloom.

The room was, or always had been, a conservatory--the original owner,
the famous artist Imlay, delighting in bringing to perfection there the
many rare plants and flowers. So the place lent itself exactly to the
work of Professor Benson. Many o