The Orchard Secret: Arden Blake Mystery Series #1

would be shaking out their evening papers and the respective mothers would be seeing to it that the dinners weren’t late. [19] With a start Arden turned away from the windows. She wasn’t getting homesick, was she, so soon? She who had urged the others to come to Cedar Ridge! A typical freshman trick! But no! Sim and Terry seemed all right. Terry was combing her sandy hair, and Sim was rummaging in her suitcase. Not the prettiest of the three, Sim Westover had something about her that left a clear impression which could be remembered afterward. Her eyes, large and sparkling, were sea-gray in color, with long, dark-brown lashes. It was fitting that Sim’s eyes should, somehow, be of a sea tint, for since she was a little girl she had spent all her summers at the shore, and she reveled in surf-bathing and swimming in deep water. Sim made no secret of the fact that some day she was going to be a champion swimmer and diver. That, perhaps, was why she had so readily agreed to Arden’s proposal to come to Cedar Ridge when she saw the picture of the swimming pool in the prospectus. And that was why Sim was going to be so bitterly disappointed because the pool was out of use. A storage place for vegetables. Poor Sim! Terry considered herself the luckiest in her family, for all her sisters had straw-colored brows and lashes that are often seen with reddish hair. [20] Tall and muscular was Terry, and she had fine eyes with brown lashes and brows. She played tennis and golf, rode, and was a good swimmer, though, as she admitted, not as “crazy” about it as was Sim. Sim was different. She was small, light-haired, and round of face. She was afraid that some day she would be fat. Perhaps that was why she paid so much attention to water sports. Arden smoothed her dark, softly curling hair, turned her blue eyes away from the window view that was fast being obscured by the darkness outside, and said: “Choose whichever beds you girls want. I’ll take the one you leave. And about the pool——” “About the pool!” interrupted Sim. “I came here because of that, and now it might as well not be here. I thought it was queer they’d leave a wheelbarrow at the entrance. It couldn’t be used in…