Jessie shook her head. “He has a strange sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“All he sees is the money,” Grandfather said. “Nothing else matters to someone like that.”
“Was anything said about what would happen to him?” Henry asked.
“Well,” Clay said, “it’s certain he’s going to be paying a lot of fines.”
“Do you think he’s out of the chemical business?” Benny asked.
“That’s for sure,” Clay said. “His license to make chemicals will be taken away as soon as the government hears about this.”
“What a shame,” Grandfather said. “A man with so much knowledge and business skill turning bad like that.”
“I’ll bet if he would’ve worked harder on something else, he could have made up for all the money he lost,” Violet suggested.
“You’re probably right,” Clay replied. “But instead he chose to do something evil, and now he’s lost everything.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment, thinking about Mr. Wentworth’s troubles.
Jessie spoke next. “You might say he’s got one honey of a problem on his hands.”
The children started laughing first.
“Yeah,” added Henry, “he sure got himself into a sticky situation!”
Now the adults joined in and the dining room rang with laughter.
“It certainly feels nice to have a good laugh,” Mr. Sherman said, “after the worry of the last several days.” Then he said, “Speaking of honey, that reminds me …” and got up from the table. He disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes, then returned with five small, colorfully wrapped boxes with bows on top.
“This is another little thank-you for each of you. The first of a new batch.”
He handed out the boxes to the Aldens, who began unwrapping them. Inside the boxes were jars of homemade honey from the Shermans’ farm.
But when they took the jars out, they noticed something different on the labels — where it used to say, MADE AT SHERMAN FARM, GREENFIELD, CONNECTICUT, it now said, MADE AT NORTH STAR FARMS, GREENFIELD, CONNECTICUT.
“Isn’t this supposed to say ‘Sherman Farm’ at the bottom?” Benny asked.
“Why the change in name?” Grandfather asked.
Clay smiled at Dottie, and she smiled back.
“No, the name is right. It’s an old name, actually,” he said. “The original name of this farm, back when we were first making honey.”
“The original name?” Jessie asked. “Why’d you change back?”
“How about letting our new partners explain the name change?” Clay said to Dottie.
The Alden children looked at Clay in mild confusion.
At that moment, Jack Hennessey and his wife, Lorraine, walked into the room, smiling happily.
“Hi, everybody!” Jack said cheerfully. “Mind if we join you?”
Conveniently there were two empty places at the table. The Aldens had noticed them before, but hadn’t wanted to ask about them.
Jessie said, “You mean …”
“That’s right,” Clay replied, coming behind Jack and putting his hands on Jack’s shoulders. “From now on, we’re back in business together. All four of us.”
“That’s wonderful!” Violet said.
“All these years we’ve been mad at each other,” Jack said, “and it’s been so long that neither of us remembers what we were so angry about.”
Clay smiled. “You know how stubborn people can be sometimes.”
Dottie rolled her eyes. “Do we ever.”
Lorraine Hennessey reached over and put her hand on Dottie’s. “At least we can be friends again without having to keep it a secret.”
Clay and Jack both looked puzzled. “What?” they both asked.
“Oh, Jack,” Lorraine said, “you don’t think Dottie and I were going to stop being friends just because you two did, do you?”
Jack pointed, moving his finger between the two ladies. “You mean you’ve been …?”
Dottie smiled slyly. “That’s right. We wanted no part of your ridiculous fight.”
The Aldens all smiled. Clay and Jack looked at each other in astonishment.
“How do you like that?” Clay said. “Here we went to all the trouble to be mad at each other all these years, and the whole time our wives were best friends.”
Jack shook his head. “Just goes to show how much smarter they are than us, I guess.”
Now everyone laughed.
Grandfather stood and held his glass in the air. “I’d like to propose a toast,” he said. “To North Star Farms. May they never have anything but the greatest success.”
Everyone cheered.
Then Clay Sherman rose and lifted his own glass. “And here’s to the Aldens. May they solve their next mystery just as neatly as they solved this one.”
Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny agreed enthusiastically. And each wondered what new challenges that next mystery would bring.
GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book, The Boxcar Children, quickly proved she had succeeded.
Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write the mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car — the situation the Alden children find themselves in.
When Miss Warner received requests for more adventures involving Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden, she began additional stories. In each, she chose a special setting and introduced unusual or eccentric characters who liked the unpredictable.
While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner’s books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible — something else that delights young readers.
Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Albert Whitman & Company
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Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Honeybee Mystery
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