Aunt Jane's Nieces At Millville

And I finally read the third book in the Aunt Jane's Nieces series.

Major Doyle informs Uncle John he has a farm up in Millville. (I had to check; yes, there is a Millville, New York, but it doesn't seem to match the Millville as described in the book. Going off of just Wikipedia, the fictional Millville is much smaller.) It became property of Uncle John's bank when young Joseph Wegg defaulted on his loans.

Well, summer's coming on, and it'll be getting hot in New York City, so Uncle John has the farm set up so he and nieces can spend the summer there.

Of course, the nieces can't go and just relax, and they begin investigating the history of the Wegg family. If Captain Wegg was so rich on such a poor farm, what became of all his money? How did he die? Murder?

The answers are eventually revealed, but the nieces never could have guessed the truth!

Meanwhile, there are couple other humorous subplots. One only lasts a couple chapters as a local shopkeeper woman sends her son to court Patsy, Beth, and Louise, expecting him to get engaged to one of them. However, he doesn't exactly have the moves...

Another involves Mr. McNutt, who Uncle John hired to have the farm fixed up and furnished before they arrived. McNutt knows full well how rich Uncle John is and attempts to get more of his money all the time. He manages to sell Uncle John and the nieces his last three copies of Radford's Lives of Saints, and not good copies either. They play it cool, but the nieces manage to exact revenge in one of the most humorous ways I've ever read!

Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville was definitely an improvement on Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad. The nieces take on more of an active role. It is, in fact, Louise who begins reading mystery into the Wegg family. Also, no one's lives are put in danger, so it's overall more of a fun story.

I have an ever-increasing number of books to read, but I went ahead and grabbed Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work, so I'll probably be blogging about that within a week.