Research Holp

Notes for #1 The Secret of the Mansion
Page # Quote
6
  • Trixie's brothers could go to camp because they are working as junior counselors. The big estate known as Manor House, west of Crabapple Farm had been vacant ever since Trixie could remember. No other homes nearby except for crumbling mansion on eastern hill where Mr. Frayne lived alone.
  • The three estates faced a quiet country road 2 miles from the village of Sleepyside that nestled among the rolling hills on the east bank of the Hudson River.
  • Trixie's father worked in the bank in Sleepyside,and Trixie and her brothers went to the village school.
7 Mrs. Belden: "I'll pay you something every week if you help me with Bobby and the housework. And I know Dad would be glad to increase your allowance if you do some weeding and take over Mart's chore of feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs." Trixie: "Maybe I could earn five dollars a week."
9 Mr. Frayne and Trixie's father had a disagreement about the boundary line between the two properties.
11 Mr. Frayne and his wife were very kind to Mr. and Mrs. Belden when they moved up here from the city.
12 You used to be able to see the summerhouse quite plainly from here. (the garden)
16 A fat little cocker spaniel rushed down to meet them. Right behind the puppy was a tall thin girl whose pale face was framed in shoulder-length, light-brown hair.
17 Honey: "Mother wouldn't let me have one (a bike) in the city because of traffic, and the rest of the time I was at boarding school and camp where they're not allowed."
18
  • Honey: "When I was little, my nurses never let me play in the dirt the way Bobby is now, and I was never allowed to go any place by myself for fear of being kidnapped."
  • Trixie: "See that big old gray and yellow house on the opposite hill? A crazy old man lives there."
23 Miss Trask … a trim, middle-aged woman with very short, crisp, gray hair. She was wearing a tailored slack suit and sturdy-looking brown and white oxfords. She had bright blue eyes which twinkled merrily.
27 Lady is a dapple-gray mare.
28 Lady has the habit of blowing herself up while she's being saddled.
32 Strawberry is a strawberry roan.
33 They walked their horses along the path that circled the willow-bordered lake, and saw a new rowboat tied alongside the rustic boathouse.
34 The trail ended at the boundary line between the 2 properties which was marked by a thick hedge interlaced with heavy vines. A narrow path wound from this point down the hill to the hollow and Crabapple Farm.
42 Lying sound asleep on an old mattress in the middle of the floor was a tall, redheaded boy.
44 Jim: "I walked most of the way from Albany to find him (his great-uncle)."
45 Jim: "I haven't any family except Uncle James. I've got a stepfather, if you can call him that. I call him Simon Legree, myself. And if he finds out where I am, he'll drag me back to his farm and make me slave from morning till night without pay."
46 Jim: "Jonesy-that's my stepfather-is my legal guardian, and he'll never let anybody take his place. When I was born, my father's Uncle James sent me this mug; and at the same time, he wrote Mother and Dad that he and Aunt Nell were naming me in their wills as their sole heir."
50 Jim: "Jonesy wouldn't let me get any job at all. He made me work on his truck farm without pay."
56 Trixie raced up the hill through the wooded path that led up from the vegetable garden to the Wheeler estate. She met Honey coming around the lake from the opposite direction.
81 Trixie found Honey in the bright red and white kitchen. Honey: "How do you like my dungarees?"
82 Honey: "I learned to do dishes and make beds at camp."
92 Jim: "Dad had a black gelding like that, and I could manage him when I was only five years old. I learned to ride bareback with nothing but a halter rope to guide him."
97 The summerhouse was one long room with two large windows on each of the four sides. It's more like a detached sunporch than a house. It's on a higher spot of the grounds than the main floor of the big house, so they must have had a good view of the river from here.
101 The big laundry truck lumbered into the Belden driveway.
105
  • Honey's bike … a big basket and a speedometer and a siren and a lamp.
  • Trixie: "I bike to the store about a mile away every Sunday morning for the New York papers."
109 … Honey's room which was the prettiest room Trixie had ever seen. There were crisp white ruffled organdy curtains at the windows with a matching bedspread and a big white fluffy rug on the polished floor. The long closet was filled with dainty summer frocks, and beneath them, in individual cellophane boxes, were more shoes than Trixie had ever seen outside of a shoe store. Honey had her own private bathroom with a separate glassed-in shower and a sunken tub that was big enough to have served Bobby as a wading pool.
110 Honey: "I've been going to camp every summer since I was four."
112 Trixie: "Let's row over to that cove on the other side of the lake. You can't get to it from the woods on our property because there's so much poison ivy."
120 James Winthrop Frayne, 82, of Ten Acres, was one of the founders of the Sleepyside Hospital. Mr. Peter Belden, employee of the First National Bank.
123
  • Trixie: "There's not another place around here except yours and ours for acres and acres."
  • Trixie: "The cistern's almost empty. It went dry one summer when a fire started down in our field below the garden. There aren't any hydrants around here, you know, so although they sent out the whole fire department, the chemical truck was only one they could use."
130 Trixie: "When Reddy was a puppy he used to (froth) when he was carsick."
166 Regan sent Bobby a present. The box was filled to the brim with tiny plastic horses-black, red, and yellow. Some were trotting, some galloping, and some were rearing with manes and tails flowing.
170 Regan: "Ran away from an orphanage myself when I was about that red headed kids age. Was crazy over horses and finally got a job at a riding school."
176 Mr. Belden: "He and his wife were a charming old couple. They were so kind to us when he moved up here that I can never forget it. He was very fond of children-they both were-especially fond of little boys. Every time they went to the city they brought back presents for Brian and Mart. A big red express wagon one time. And when the boys had the chicken pox, both the Fraynes spent many hours every day reading stories to them."
178 The library … a long room the walls of which were lined from floor to ceiling with richly bound books.
179 They passed through the library into the enormous living-room.
180 Honey: "Daddy can be awfully sweet and sympathetic at times. But he's always so busy he's hardly ever at home, and when he is Mother's always giving a party or dragging him to one. She has to have people around her all the time. Not children, grownups. Mother doesn't like children I guess."
181
  • Trixie: "Maybe she's afraid of you. Maybe she feels just as shy with you as you do with her.
  • Honey: "I remember now Daddy telling me along time ago that Mother was very delicate when I was a baby."
185 Honey: "(Miss Lefferts) was about six feet tall and she must have weighed two hundred pounds. She was always sneaking up behind me and asking me if I'd done my piano lessons or embroidering or letter writing. She was the one who bought all these silly clothes. She simply couldn't resist anything with lace and ruffles."
186 Honey: "I began to talk (to mom and dad) about Miss Trask and how much I liked her. She was the math instructor at school, and we got to be friendly, because I'm not very good at algebra. She told me how she had to support an invalid sister, and I knew Daddy paid Miss Lefferts much more that the school paid Miss Trask."
189
  • Honey: "Daddy is one of the best riders in the squadron."
  • Jim: "Jonesy broods a lot, and it takes him a long time to work himself up into a rage, and when he does, he goes almost insane."
190 Jim: "I know what it's like to be tied up. The first time I ran away, Jonesy caught me and tied me, hand and foot, to the bed for three days."
191 Jim: "I worked like anything to do two years in one and still keep at the head of the class. Geometry practically threw me."
192 Jim: "Jonesy kept books on how much it's cost him ever since I went to live with him. I was like an animal that had to be kept well-fed so it could work hard. They (neighbors) know about the beatings. One of them interfered once, and Jonesy was so scared he didn't touch me for several days after that."
194 Jim: "They're (mice) kind of friendly, and one of them's practically tame, so he must have been Uncle James's pet."
195
  • Trixie: "Mr. Lytell's store is closed on Tuesdays on account of being open Sundays."
  • Belle, gray, sway-backed mare with gaunt hipbones and discouraged-looking eyes.
201 Mr. Lytell: "It's time for me to go to the train for the city papers. I'm taking the short cut to the store."
204 Mr. Belden: "There's no mortgage on the property and it's worth at least ten thousand dollars. Widow was living in Rochester at the time of her husbands death."
213 - 214 Jim stared around the low-ceilinged room (Crabapple living room). "This is a nice place. It reminds me of the house we had in the country before Dad got sick. We had to sell it then and move to a small apartment in Rochester."
216
  • From newspaper article, "A reply to a query in Albany, revealed a birth certificate for a boy, James Winthrop Frayne II, who, if he is still alive, would be fifteen this month. …boy and his mother seem to have vanished after the death of the boy's father, five years ago."
  • "We didn't vanish," Jim said. "We stayed right on in Rochester until Mother married Jonesy. Then we went to live on his farm outside of Albany."
219
  • Trixie: "That apple," (Trixie pokes the apple in a still life) "is no more an apple than I am." Picture frame sprang away from the wall revealing a hidden alcove. "I thought that apple looked as though it had been painted in as an afterthought."
  • Trixie triumphantly pulled out a tiny leather-covered jewel case. "It's an old-fashioned engagement ring."
225 Jim: "It belonged to my great-aunt. Here are the initials and the date of their wedding."
229 Brian and Mart go shooting with Reddy sometimes according to Trixie.
230 Jim: "Dad used to take me on moonlight rides when I was just a kid. Once I fell asleep on the way back, and he had to carry me on his saddle and lead my horse as well."
231 Jim: "Sometimes I think if I'd behaved better at first, Jonesy might have been kinder to me. Once I looked up suddenly from my homework and caught him staring at me. There was such a mean look in his eyes that I was honestly scared to death for a minute."
234 Trixie saw a thin, stoop-shouldered man. Trixie thought she had never seen such a mean-looking face before. His thin lips were drawn back over yellow, protruding teeth; his eyes glittered cruelly. Long, muscular arms swung ape-like from his broad, bent shoulders and she shuddered as she watched his thick, twisted fingers light the cigarette which dangled from his ugly mouth.
240 Trixie slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the window to stare up at the old Mansion, sharply silhouetted against the starlit sky.
250 Trixie: "Did you have a nightmare last night? The one about being in the sealed room with the big balloon pressing down on you?" Honey: "Why no."
251 Honey: "I bet I don't have any nightmares any more. The creepy feeling I had that something awful was going to happen is gone away too."
253 Jim wrote, "A treasure was hidden in the Mansion and in the very room where you said all along we'd find it. I want you to have my great-aunt's ring to remember me by."
256 Honey: (to George Rainsford) "Didn't you come to our apartment in New York for dinner one evening last winter?"
259 Mr. Rainsford: "Jim has nothing to worry about from Jones. I've gathered enough evidence from neighbors on the farms outside Albany to prove to a judge that Jim's stepfather is not a competent guardian."
260 Mr. Rainsford: "Mr. Frayne got a bit queer after his wife's sudden death. He took all of his money out of banks and turned over the rest of his estate to me. He formed a trust for his great-nephew, but I was not to inform Jim of this trust until after his uncle's death."