Free The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace by Julie Campbell

said, “perhaps Mr. McDuff doesn’t want to tell us his life story.”
    “I was only trying to be friendly,” Trixie mumbled.
    “Ask away,” laughed their guide. “I don’t mind. In truth, I was but a wee lad when my father emigrated to the land of promise.”
    Jim smiled down at Trixie, who was squeezed in between him and Honey. “I believe you said you’d been a guide in London,” he said to the Scotsman. “Then you’ve been here before?”
    “Many times,” McDuff said. “But the occasion of my present journey is a sad one, ye might say. Or ye might not, depending upon how ye look at it. This was to have been my honeymoon.”
    Trixie sucked in her breath. “What—what happened to your, uh, fiancée?”
    McDuff threw back his grizzled black head and roared. “If it’s kicking the bucket ye’re worried about, lassie, don’t bother. She’s still in the land of the living. To tell ye the truth, I was jilted.”
    There was a chorus of protests. “I’m terribly sorry,” said Honey.
    “Dinna waste your sympathy,” McDuff said. “Two can’t travel for the price of one, that’s what I say. And I’ve surely fallen into good company on my road to Scotland. ‘Oh, you’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,’ ” he sang, and they all joined in. “ ‘But I and my true love will never meet again, on the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.’ ”
    He sure doesn’t act like his heart is broken , thought Trixie.
    Aloud she inquired, “Then you’re on your way to Scotland now?”
    “Aye, to visit my uncle. But there’s no great rush,” McDuff assured them. “I’ll be glad to be your guide for a few days.”
    Mart, unusually quiet so far, was sitting by the window, looking out at the countryside. Rolling green hills, wooded estates, and stone-walled villages flashed by. Then pastures and ancient brick farmhouses became more frequent.
    “Jeepers,” Mart said. “These farmers use trees for windbreaks, and piles of stones or hedges instead of fences. Those must be what they call hedgerows— how about that? And look at all the sheep!”
    “Mart plans to major in agriculture when he goes to college,” Trixie explained to McDuff, still trying her best to be friendly. “Back home, we live on a farm, but it’s just a small one, and my dad works in a bank, so we don’t raise crops exactly—except raspberries and crab apples, of course—but anyway, Mart is planning to teach at Jim’s school for underprivileged boys, and—”
    “Whoa!” Mart pleaded. “Pipe down, will you? I’d like to find out something about English farming.”
    “Happy to oblige,” said McDuff. “These are the Cotswold Hills—hilly, upland territory and sheep country. The pastures are laid out in neat rectangles and bounded—as ye noticed, lad—by hedges and rows of trees.”
    Mart’s blue eyes were filled with admiration at the notion of fences that one planted.
    “We learned a whole lot about sheep on my Uncle Andrew’s farm in Iowa,” Trixie told McDuff.
    McDuff didn’t seem to hear her. “I love the English countryside,” he was telling Miss Trask, “even better than London.”
    “It’s so peaceful,” Honey agreed happily. “No pickpockets!”
    Trixie was about ready to give up on conversation altogether, when she looked out the window and noticed a road sign. “Stow-on-the-Wold,” she laughed. “What’s that?”
    “I believe it’s one of England’s little hamlets,” Miss Trask said.
    “Hamlet? I thought England had only one—the play by Shakespeare,” Trixie said.
    “The word also means a village,” said Miss Trask without turning around.
    Trixie slouched down in the seat. Either I’ve turned totally paranoid, she thought, or there is a let’s-see-how-dumb-we-can-make-Trixie-look plot afoot. She saw McDuff glance over to smile at Miss Trask, and without thinking, she muttered out loud, “He could at least keep his eyes on the