Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
L. Frank Baum
 Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville picks up the story of the three cousins, Patsy Doyle, Beth De Graf, and Louise Merrick, soon after their return from Europe in Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad. As in that earlier book, their benign and eccentric millionaire Uncle John devotes much of his fortune to helping others &mdash; an effort managed by Patsy's father, Major Doyle. These efforts do not always yield fiscally sound results: in one case, Merrick and Doyle loaned a few thousand dollars to a young inventor named Joseph Wegg for a patent he was developing &mdash; but Wegg lost a patent lawsuit, and Merrick now owns the collateral on Wegg's loan, a farm in a remote region of upper New York State. In his capricious way, Merrick decides to take his nieces to the farm to escape the city's heat during the approaching summer; he arranges for a real-estate agent to get the farmhouse in good order and ships crates of furnishings to the place, sight unseen. Merrick and his three nieces come north, and find the farmhouse a surprisingly appealing place. The local inhabitants of a tiny village in the northern foothills of the Adirondack Mountains are naturally interested in the new residents; they call Merrick "the nabob." The girls quickly become fascinated by the family of the previous owner. Joe Wegg's father had been a retired sea captain, and something of a recluse; his close friend Will Thompson went mad when Captain Wegg died, and both of their fortunes mysteriously disappeared. The girls meet and become friends with Thompson's daughter Ethel, the local schoolteacher. Also, the cousins (with Louise in the lead; she takes a more prominent role in this book than in the previous volumes) decide that Captain Wegg was murdered and robbed, and set about in search of suspects. They pry into the local past with limited results; but matters begin to clear when Joe Wegg returns home to convalesce from a car accident. The girls are dispirited to learn that there was no murder and no robbery. It is Uncle John who unravels a genuine mystery, as to the fate to the Wegg and Thompson fortunes. He recovers a missing deed that ensures that Joe Wegg and Ethel Thompson can marry in comfort and security.