Research Holp

Notes for #5 The Mystery off Glen Road © 1956, 2004
Page # Quote
6 Trixie and Honey were both 13 but didn't look at all alike. Trixie was small and sturdily built with round blue eyes and short sandy curls. Honey was tall and slim with enormous hazel eyes. She had shoulder-length, golden brown hair which earned her the nickname Honey. The boys had recently put a new roof on the clubhouse, painted it inside and out, and had partitioned off one section of the interior which they had lined with shelves. Brian and Jim, who were sixteen and fifteen respectively, had made a big table and benches for the conference room, using odds and ends of pine which they had bought cheaply at the Sleepyside Lumber Yard. Mart, who was exactly eleven months older than Trixie, was not as handy with carpentry tools, had done his share by sanding and staining the furniture.
8 Honey: "The streams on our property are filled with minks. Daddy hates them because they eat up all his trout."
9 Trixie: "Moms does everything and she never complains. Even when she's canning gallons of stuff all day in boiling hot weather she always looks so young and pretty."
12 Brian tiredly pushed a lock of his wavy jet-black hair out of his eye.
16 One of the ancient crabapple trees which lined the driveway had been uprooted by the gale.
18 Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, as had originally been planned, were not in the receiving line. Honey: "Daddy was called away on business at the last minute to Florida, and so Mother just couldn't resist going along."
20 Honey: "Ever since summer Daddy has been buying up land on both sides of Glen Road so now he has a sanctuary of about three hundred acres. It's stocked with all sorts of creatures like deer and pheasant and partridge and trout and bass. One of Daddy's friends recommended Mr. Fleagle as the best gamekeeper in the world."
21 Honey: "Fleagle thinks he can take a horse from the stable whenever he feels like it."
22
  • Honey: "The worst part is that when Fleagle comes back with a horse all sweaty, he refuses to groom him or clean the tack."
  • Miss Trask was the brisk kind of woman who, no matter what the occasion was, always wore tailored suits and sensible oxfords. She seldom wore a hat over her short gray hair and liked nothing better than to take long walks in the pouring rain, spurning an umbrella as something beneath her dignity.
26 Brian: "In that strangely feminine garment she is wearing, she looks more like a giant but bruised California orange."
36 Bobby: "We're right smack in the middle of a horrorcane."
38 Mrs. Belden: "I'm so glad he has at last earned the money to buy that old car Mr. Lytell wants to sell." Trixie: "And Tom Delanoy says it's a wonderful buy at fifty dollars."
39 Moms loved all of the trees and shrubs almost as much as she loved her children. She had cared for a great many of them herself from the day that Dad had brought them home from the nearby nursery.
45 Bobby: "No school today." Trixie: "How do you know? Did the siren blow?" … thick sandwiches made of bread, butter, peanut butter, and jam. … and they had named the sandwiches the Crabapple Farm Specials.
48 Mart: "Jim says it'll cost fifty bucks to fix the roof and wall. You know how Brian is. 'United we stand; divided we fall.'"
52 Honey: "I'm not your stepsister! I'm you very own full-blooded adopted sister."
58 Trixie: "You and Di used to be frail and feminine, but since you two joined the Bob-Whites, I notice you both prefer blue jeans to frilly dresses."
61 Trixie: "I've got dresses somewhere."
62 Trixie: "They're in her (Moms) closet, I think, two or three of them."
63 Honey: "My cousin, Ben Riker, is the only one. He's going to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with us."
70 She (Trixie) appeared at dinner that evening wearing a red-and-white dotted-swiss Nylon frock. Mr. Belden patted his small mustache with his napkin.
72 Moms: "Perhaps that strand of seed pearls your Aunt Alicia gave you last Christmas. Where is it?" Brian: "I know where that necklace is. Bobby planted it in the garden last spring so he could grow some pearl bushes.
74 Brian: "Ben Riker is a creep of the first water."
77 She (Trixie) appeared at the table wearing six bracelets on each arm, earrings, and ropes of cheap pearls around her neck.
81
  • Trixie: "You can't shoot a deer with a gun. It's against the law in Westchester County. You have to use a longbow. This year you can only hunt deer during the last two weeks in November and the first two weeks in December.
  • Trixie: "The sun sets in the west and I've often seen it dropping down into the Hudson River behind Lytell's store."
88 Just then a man she (Trixie) had never seen before came out of the store. He was tall and gaunt with broad, slightly stooping shoulders. Most of Lytell's customers were neighbors whom she had known ever since she was a little girl.
90 The storekeeper uttered a sound that made Trixie think of a billy goat's bleat. As a matter of fact, the storekeeper with his wispy mustache did look rather like a goat.
94 Mr. Lytell: "Miss Trask thinks the world of you, and I think the world of Miss Trask. So there must be some good in you."
103 Jim: "I'm going to have a great big scarlet ribbon made for you and on it, printed in gold, will be: 'Miss Nonsense of America.'" Mart: "I'll be her press agent."
104 Mart: "We'll tour the country together, I in my limousine and she in her cage. Remind me to make a sign for that cage, Jim. Something to the effect that customers should not poke their fingers through the bars unless they wish to lose said fingers."
108 Jim: "She's (Trixie) sort of a human slide rule. Anybody who isn't a crazy as she is, must be sane by comparison."
115 Trixie: "You know as well as I do, Honey, that there are only huge estates around here. The people who own them have been living there for generations."
135 Regan came out of the tack room and handed Trixie a quirt. "Give her a good switching. She's got a stubborn streak."
145 Di: "Let's play some of our favorite records. I'm so glad you (Ben) like hillbilly songs too." Honey: "He's (Ben) really very good looking. Tall and blond and broad-shouldered and all."
148 Trixie: "Are you sure these are all fakes?" Honey: "Of course. They're not even good paste imitations."
153 Trixie: "But there are plenty of big wild cats. That's why that little purple mountain over there is called Catamount Hill."
154 Trixie knew about these internal organs of animals because she had often cleaned chickens after her brothers had killed and plucked them. Moms had painstakingly taught her how to "draw" a bird so now Trixie was what the family called an "expert butcher."
155 It was Jim who had taught Trixie how to tell the difference between the footprint of a fox and the footprint of a dog.
162 Moms: "He's (Bobby) recently acquired the habit of wetting the tooth brush and licking the powder off the palm of his hand, and then he informs me that his teeth are clean."
163 Bobby: "Read Peter Rabbit. Read, read, READ!"
181 Mart: "I will simply provide Trixie with a few facts about snares and traps and such."
183 As they (Beldens) trudged up the driveway Ben passed them in his flashy lemon-colored convertible.
184 Jim: "I gather that you have recovered from your yen for Ben. I'm sure glad of it Trix."
188 Regan: "There's a whole box of crinkly red tissue paper upstairs in my room. It'll make a grand fire, won't it Bobby?"
192 Trixie: "Aunt Alicia gave this (compass) to Bobby on his birthday, but it cost a lot of money, so Moms has been keeping it for him until he's old enough to take care of it properly." Honey: "I know Bobby. He doesn't mind breaking his own things, but if anyone else touches them, well, revenge is sweet."
200 The interior (Maypenny's cabin) was neat and clean but sparsely furnished. A bunk was in one corner and in the center of the room there were two homemade chairs and a table.
212 Mart: "How do you do it? You always give the impression that you're totally insane, and yet, in the end, you're the only one who makes sense."
223 Honey: "Have you forgotten the motto Mart gave him months ago? 'Revenge is sweet. Saccharine-sweet!'"
226 Mr. Lytell followed Miss Trask into the dining room, hovering at her elbow. Trixie had always suspected that Mr. Lytell was in love with Miss Trask, and now she knew it.
230 Trixie decided she did like Ben Riker after all. Instead of being silly, he had actually been helpful in many ways.
240 Honey: "Mr. Lytell told me that you owned land around here, but I didn't think it was in the middle of Daddy's preserve." Mr. Maypenny: "A pie-shaped section consisting of ten acres. It's belonged to me and my family for night onto hundred years. I've lived off it man and boy since I was your age.
242 Mr. Maypenny: "Next day he (Mr. Wheeler) came back and offered me twenty thousand dollars for the land."
250 Mrs. Belden: "I've always said he (Mr. Lytell) was a very nice man and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he and Miss Trask got married some day."
251 Brian: "And best of all, Jim has a permanent job with him as part-time assistant gamekeeper."
256 Ben: "What's all this about a ring? It sounds as though you two were engaged or something." Trixie: "If Jim were the last man on earth I wouldn't marry him."
257 Jim (helped Trixie to her feet): "On you snow looks good. You should wear it more frequently. Especially on your eyelashes. Much more becoming than mascara."