After they had all recovered from the shock of their disappointment, they laughed a little. It really was funny--There they had been planning what they would do with all the money after it had been properly divided! Of course, the lost will would have given the money to the finders, you know.
Mark fingered the buttons, grimy with much dust. “They don’t make buttons like this any more,” he said. “They are very interesting. I am glad I found them.” He said that they had not yet come to the end of the mystery. “_Why_ is there a circle on the attic floor?” he questioned. “Why?”
Nobody could say. Then they heard Mother’s voice downstairs. “You’ll have to tell about the floor,” Marjorie suggested. “We can never get it down again.”
So they did. It was a sorry group that said good-night, even after they had been forgiven.
Next day when Mark returned from school, he heard the carpenter repairing the damaged floor up in his den and he rushed up there.
“Say,” he said, “what do you suppose anybody ever made a circle on the floor like that for unless it was an astrologer?”
The carpenter laughed. “Sonny,” he smiled. “I’ve been in this house when there was a big cistern right here--Know what a cistern is? It’s what the family used to depend upon for water in the house. When they took it down, the floor that was painted all around it showed the circle where the cistern had stood. That’s all. It wasn’t any astrologer that made it.”
After that, somehow, the news about the cistern’s having been Mark’s mysterious circle in dim ages past, leaked out. Richard and Marjorie and Mabel and Eleanore plagued him forever after--but, anyway, Mark says, some day when he does find a fortune and a lost will, they’ll stop laughing at him. Maybe that’s true.
_November’s first surprise pocket was another strange mystery. Dotty always chuckled when Marjorie asked her to tell what it was. “I can’t,” she laughed. “It’s a joke!” So poor Marjorie had to quiet her curiosity and wait till the very day before Thanksgiving. Then she ripped open the Surprise Book’s surprise and undid the paper that she found wrapped around that queer lumpy-bumpy-feeling thing. You couldn’t guess what Dotty had put in--it was a wish-bone. “Good wishes for a fine Thanksgiving dinner,” it send. As for the story, that was dated to read on the evening before Thanksgiving. It was called “Ermelinda’s Family,” and it was a Thanksgiving story._