It was dawn on Lake Hocomo, and the sun that disappeared behind the hills last night after spilling his colorful paint-pots into the surprised waters, tried to make amends now by softening the deadened mixture into a haze of amethyst mists.
Gray, purple, rosy, and all so velvety, like the essence of color-life itself, the day dawned; welcomed by glad birds from every bush, tree or meadow spot for miles around.
Were the Bobbies up now they might have learned something from their namesake. On a soft patch of velvet grass, jeweled with dew-blessed buttercups, and that tiniest of flowers, the pale blue forget-me-not, the bobolinks fluttered, their song as reckless as the riot of early day, as they paddled along on wingtips to the gay rhythm of rippling, reckless aria; for a happy little songster is the bobolink, shooting up and diving down into the wet grasses for his bath of sweetness, then swaying on the slenderest of stems, not unlike the little girl who stands perched on her springboard in the first joys of water-diving.
It was because this rollicking bird sings as he flies that the vote of the Scouts resulted in his name being chosen, and on the dawn recorded the brown-gray streaked little songster left his meadow for a glimpse of that new camp in the woods. Soon he must go South for his rice feast, for early in summer the birds of his clan descend upon the rice fields and lo——!
The bobolink perched himself on the top of that new flagpole, and perhaps his trilled notes were a co-mingling of praise and good wishes. But the Bobbies were sleeping in their mothers’ cottages and dreaming of the first night in camp.
Dick Porter, the night-watchman on the grounds around Tamarack Hills, rubbed his eyes and heaved the sigh of another task completed. Then he took a last look at Camp Comalong, for the Scouts had already stored in the tent goods of value, straightened his shoulders to suit the daytime needs, and sauntered off for his breakfast at the Nipanneck.
Quickly as he turned away from the camp grounds a girl stole down from the highest hilltop. Peg, the mysterious, without hat and in simple skirt and blouse, frightened away the chipmunks and bunnies as she skipped, light as a fawn, over the path invisible to less familiar eyes, then she too stopped in front of that dignified flagpole. She looked up and down the length of it and brushed her hand quizzically over its smooth surface.
“Humph!” she jerked. “Going to have everything first class, I guess.”
Cautiously she stepped up to the rustic “sideboard.” This brought from her lips no caustic comment, but at once claimed her wrapt attention. She touched the burlap curtain and peeked under it. She gingerly fingered the rustic basket that held a bunch of wild flowers and hid the glass jar of water, she smiled real approval at the wood’s fern in the rugged nail-keg that offset the center, and a little sigh escaped Peg as she turned to the tent.
The new wood floor was fragrant as the pines, and as it was raised to make it safe from dampness the two “carpentered” steps with the doormat at top seemed very inviting indeed.
The girl ventured under the canvas and stood as if spellbound.
“Scouts!” she was thinking. “And I was the only Scout here till they came with all this.”
The cots were still covered with burlap, and the little foot rugs were rolled in a bundle with some of Cleo’s precious cretonnes. Peg just touched all this with her brown fingers, and in a girl’s way smiled at this or frowned at that, as the fancy struck her.
A shrill whistle from the first lake steamer startled Peg as if she had been detected in her stolen inspection, and poking her head out of the tent to make sure the coast was clear, she jumped down the two white steps and made for the path, safe and unseen even by the girls from Camp Norm, who were just starting out for their nature hike. Peg quickly lost herself in the elderbrush lane that wound through the woods leading up to her own bungalow.
A big shaggy collie ran out to meet her. She patted him fondly and he “wagged her” along to the door, where a woman stood waiting. She was related to the girl, that was obvious, for she had the same high toss to her head, and the same snapping black eyes, also the pure white hair showed the original color must have been black to have changed to white so early.
“Peggie, dear, where have you been?” asked the woman. Her voice was low and well-modulated.
“Just down to see the new camp,” replied the girl. “Had your breakfast?”
“No, I waited for you. I do hope, Peggie,” there was a note of entreaty in her words, “that you are not doing anything—risky.”
“Ramrods and toothpicks!” exclaimed the girl. “Anything risky! Why, Carrie, I went down to see the new camp—the Girl Scouts, you know.”
“Oh yes. Those little girls who wear the uniform?”
“Uh—ha: the girls who wear a perpetual smile and several dollars’ worth of necktie,” replied Peg, a bit sarcastically.
“I am sure they look very neat and tidy, and I hope you are going to make friends with them,” ventured Aunt Carrie, vindictively.
“Now, please don’t start pestering me with that sort of thing,” protested the girl. “You know I don’t want to make friends with any girls.”
“You are so foolish, dear, and I fear sometimes you are going to extremes with——”
“Now, Carrie! Don’t be cross, please. Just let me have my way for this one little summer and the time will be up. Then, if you want me to, I’ll curl my hair if I have to sleep on the rolling-pin with the ends wound round it.” She laughed gaily at this prospect.
“Come in to breakfast. Shag has had his and we have such lovely berries. Come along, girlie,” directed the aunt, and she wound an arm over the shoulder that pressed up to her affectionately.
Shag, the big collie, took up his post at the door. The bungalow was unique in type, if bungalows are ever alike, and the pine trees that sheltered and brushed its roof with a sibilant swish, hummed now a pretty tuneless whisper. The place was hidden against a rocky ledge and not until one stood squarely in front of the unpainted log cabin was the building really visible, in its nest of trees and brush.
Some few years before a man with his little daughter and his sister came up to the hills. He stayed at the Tippiturn House while he built this bungalow. Then he took his daughter Peggie and his sister Caroline to the house in the hills, where he lived apart from all the natives and cottagers. This was Horace Ramsdell, Peggie’s father, but few people had cause to remember the name, for the owner lived aloof from others and made few friends even in the village.
With all this he was a very pleasant man, fond of animals, kind to youngsters and generous in payment for any service. He died suddenly the year before the Scouts found their way into Tamarack Hills, where they crossed the path of Peg, the now fifteen-year-old daughter.
She followed her father’s footsteps in living alone, and in the matter of shunning companions, but she could not avoid making friends, as Pete the boatman had already assured the Girl Scouts.
Her queer ways, defiance of dress codes, and above all her fondness for horseback riding, naturally stirred up criticism, but Peg was as oblivious of this as she was of the taunts so often flung at her by school girls, whose companionship she seemed to ignore.
“Fly-away Peg,” they called her, and the way she “flew to school” on her blue roan might easily have merited the caption. But to Morton School from Tamarack Hills was a long distance, mostly covered by woodlands, and when others came in autos or by wagon, why shouldn’t Peg come on horseback?
She should and she did, with a smile for the Fly-away Peg, and some fruit, winter and summer, for the old janitor who took care of her horse during the school session.
There was something incongruous in her attitude. She was so lively and rollicking with anyone who would not follow up the familiarity, but just as soon as one would threaten to call at her bungalow, or would ask her to call at theirs, Peg seemed to take fright and would scurry off like some woodland thing jealous of its hiding place.
No tradesman ever got past the door of her cabin; not even good old Doctor Rowan was brought inside when once he called to pay a professional visit on Aunt Carrie.
On that occasion the lady, being ill, was very comfortably propped in the big steamer-chair on the porch, Peg declaring she felt better out in the air, and that she preferred sleeping out there when the weather was mild enough.
So Peg of Tamarack Hills was a queer girl in many ways, and the mystery surrounding her home life always served to excite the curiosity of strangers, but had not, as yet, been explained.
Perhaps a half-hour after she entered the bungalow for breakfast she appeared again in the familiar roughrider’s outfit, adjusting the leather-fringed skirt over her breeches as she stood in the doorway.
“I’ll take Shag if that will make you feel any better, Aunt Carrie,” said the girl, pulling her hat firmly on the cropped head. “Also, I’ll ride slowly enough to talk to him, and I’ll surely be back by noon. Now promise you are not going to worry.”
“I can’t promise, my dear; but I’ll try not to. You are growing up now, Peggie, and summer folks are so critical, you know.”
“Toothpicks for summer folks!” retorted the girl scornfully. “We don’t owe them anything, Carrie, and if that’s all you have got to worry about——”
“I wish it were, dear,” sighed the woman, but the girl was hurrying to the log-built barn where “Whirlwind,” her blue roan, impatiently awaited her coming.
Then she was off “like a piece of scenery,” as Pete put it. But Peggie Ramsdell had no thought of the picturesque effect she created, nor did she care for less friendly criticism that followed in her dust-blown path.
“Everything is ready. Miss Mackin has sent our application to headquarters so that we may go on record, and now all we have to do is——”
Louise interrupted Corene. “I’ve got to move all the dishes for my precious dining-room, and who can spare a car to lug them out?”
“We’ll pick you up and your tin pans on our way out this afternoon,” replied Grace, quite breathless from the excitement. “And I’ve got to press out my uniform for the celebration.”
“Come along, I guess we have everything for this trip,” said Corene, gathering up a few more “odds and ends.” What wouldn’t that camp contain?
“Come along!” repeated Cleo. “I’m so glad we named it that, for I can just fancy we will make that our slogan. ‘Come-a-long,’” she mimicked again, “and don’t spill the eats, whatever you do.”
Out at the fork in the roadway they were met by the rest of the Bobbies, and the camp on this, the opening day, was to receive a full patrol of eight members. Miss Mackin had been made official director, Corene was leader, and the other members were Louise, Grace, Julia, Cleo, Margaret, and Madaline, the last two being visitors, but also regular Scouts in the home troop.
Miss Mackin had already taken up her place in the camp and was now fully responsible, according to the best standards of the general organization; but in spite of that she allowed the girls to make the camp as they thought best, realizing that their plans were affording them a splendid chance to express individuality, and it was their proud boast that Camp Comalong was entirely theirs, from flagpole to the spring ditch, and from tent roof to the pine-needle pillows which Julia insisted should be used.
And they were really moving in!
A little gasp of anticipation sort of choked Cleo as she realized she was going to sleep with that oft-mentioned thin “rag of canvas twixt her and the stars.” She wondered what they would do when it rained, and was glad the good, strong board floor was raised high enough to crawl under should a storm get too furious.
Benny called this the cyclone-cellar, and it was stored with enough furniture which could not be utilized “just now” to give it a rather cyclonic appearance.
The blankets on the eight nicely arranged cots had not been folded just as Corene had directed, so this detail was the first thing attended to now.
“You see,” she explained, “an awful lot depends upon the beds. They are our chief decoration, you might say,” as she proceeded to make each bed very pretty indeed, with a diamond-shaped blanket in gay colors throwing its brilliancy clear up to the brown canvas ceiling.
Bits of waste paper seemed to come from nowhere and settle everywhere, and these kept the Scouts busy, for this was to be a model camp and fit for inspection “always.”
“Now we’ll all go home and take a bathtub bath,” suggested Miss Mackin, “and be back promptly at two-thirty for the flag-raising.”
If anyone doubts girls’ ability to make life ideal in the open, such a one has surely a limited experience with life’s loveliest creatures, for girls are naturally “little animals,” and who-ever tried to teach a bunny how to dig its burrow?
At two o’clock Benny rounded up the Boy Scouts, and when these came together they formed quite a company, in which were five fifes, three were tin horns, several drums, a few being homemade and of recent production, besides mouth-organs and other varieties of noise-making instruments. Benny himself, being brother to Grace, was chosen color-bearer, and he started his company off for Tamarack Hills with many compliments following in the wake of the trusty, valiant Boy Scouts.
Friends and relations of the girls had gathered also, and it was a distinguished line of autos that parked down at the foot of the hill when the girls themselves, hiking now and disdaining car-rides, marched along to take formal possession of Camp Comalong.
The inspection came first and everyone took part in it Mothers were enthusiastic and even craved “camps like this” for the whole family. Those fathers who could do so also attended the opening, and manlike talked proudly of their girls being the real thing in the Scout line.
The boys “drummed and fifed” madly, and of course drew a crowd.
“After this one afternoon,” said Corene to Cleo’s mother, “we are going to be strictly Girl Scouts, and we will only have visitors on regular days.”
Miss Mackin was conducting one of the visiting school-teachers all over the grounds, for the fame of this girl-made camp had spread beyond its limits. Then the signal was given, and Grace pulled the rope that raised Old Glory over Tamarack Hills!
That moment was reverently solemn.
Every Girl and Boy Scout stood at attention, while the other spectators evinced their respect for the country’s glorious emblem. Then the salute was given and the strains of “Star-Spangled Banner” stole out, first timidly, then assuringly, over the hills to the soft accompaniment of the lake’s gentle swish against the rocky shore.
The hours that followed were too well-filled with excitement and interest to bear commonplace reporting, but the capable director, Miss Mackin, or “Mackey,” as she had already been affectionately dubbed by the Scouts, managed to get the grounds fairly well cleared of visitors in time for supper preparations to be begun before sunset, and presently the girls found themselves alone with their beloved scheme, “Camping in the Woods.”
“We will have a cold supper to-night,” said Mackey, “and we have two quarts of lovely fresh milk—a donation from the Boy Scouts.”
“We might have treated them,” said Grace. “They did so much for us, and their music was really splendid!”
“Indeed it was,” agreed the director, “and some afternoon we will give them all a treat. But to-night we have to try things out, so we will keep to schedule. I think everything went beautifully, and I want to congratulate you all. My friends from Camp Norm were very much impressed, and envied me my comfortable quarters,” she added considerately.
“They don’t know the squad,” laughed Corene, “and we had on our best behavior to-day. Wait, just wait until things get going.”
“We’ll get the water,” volunteered Cleo, taking the nice, shiny new pail from its peg in the tree closet. There was a row of these tree closets, being small wooden boxes nailed low enough to reach easily, and holding all the kitchen pans and pots. No one claimed these, and as Corene announced early in the plans, each should take turns, just like the K. P., or Kitchen Police, in military parlance.
Up the hill to the spring now romped Cleo and Grace. It was joyous to begin, really, to start this first meal in camp. Fleet-footed were the happy Scouts on the initial errand, and if Grace stumbled and Cleo tripped it was small wonder, considering their excited state of mind.
They were within a few feet, or bushes, of the spring when they saw a figure leaning over it.
“Look!” whispered Cleo. “It’s Peg!”
“Come on and let’s speak to her,” suggested Grace sociably.
“She might not like it,” demurred Cleo.
“Let’s try, anyhow,” insisted Grace, quickening her pace.
The girl leaning over the spring must have heard the steps, for she jumped up quickly and snatched her hat from the big stone.
“Hello!” called out Grace cheerily. “Did you come down to our camp exercises?”
The brown felt hat was pulled down very suddenly and firmly on the black hair, and for an instant the face under it flashed defiance. The next, a frank smile brought the answer.
“I did not exactly come to them, but I heard from the hill. It seemed—very nice.”
“Oh, it was. I’m sorry you didn’t come,” pressed Grace. “Let us introduce ourselves.” She waved her pail nervously. “This is Cleo and I’m Grace of the Bobolinks. You may call us the Bobbies if you will.”
Peg smiled again and scratched her heavy shoes quite like an embarrassed youth might do. She hesitated quite a while before answering:
“And I’m Peg—you may, if you will” (she pleasantly imitated the voice Grace had used), “just call me Peg,” she finished rather shyly.
It was such an agreeable surprise to find her approachable. Immediately both Scouts fell to talking of their camp prospects, and very naturally asked Peg to call.
“We know you are the original Scout of these hills,” Grace complimented, “and I hope you don’t mind our trespassing.”
“Oh, no,” replied Peg, but the voice was a little guarded. “The hills are big enough for us all,” she added, “and I don’t think you could have found a prettier spot. You can see clear across the lake from your front door,” and she smiled at the classification.
But she did not reply to the invitation. Both girls noticed the omission.
Cleo dipped her pail in the spring pool and brought it out filled. She wanted to rinse the new tin, although Corene had boiled it before bringing it out to camp, but to rinse it would cool it, and now Cleo looked about for a spot to throw the waste water.
“Toss it over this way,” suggested Peg, who was moving away. “There’s a water-cress bed here. Don’t forget to try them when you want a salad,” and before the Scouts could thank her she was racing over the next hill and waving good-bye.
“So we met Peg!” said Cleo, her pail of water spilling over her new sneaks.
“And she’s a dear,” announced Grace emphatically.
Then they carried a newly dipped pail of fresh spring water back to camp, for their first supper under the tamarack trees.
When the girls went down to the lake with Mackey that evening, they were, somehow, a source of curiosity to those friends not members of the charmed circle of Scouts. To be away from home, living in a tent out in the woods, while even the Boy Scouts had to go back to their family cottage at night, seemed highly exciting. But the Bobbies were now a unit, and under the capable direction of Miss Mackin they started immediately to do things as they are done by units, and not by individuals.
“We will go for a sail this evening,” planned the director. “I see you have all passed in the swimming tests and therefore are permitted to go in canoes.”
“Oh, yes,” Corene replied; “swimming is our chiefest joy, and canoeing on this lake, what we have had of it, is simply ideal.”
“I am sure folks will be curious about us for a while at least,” continued Miss Mackin, “so I have asked Camp Norm to let us take the big canoe this evening, the one we teachers practice in, you know.”
“The big green Pedagogue!” exclaimed Cleo. “Oh, how splendid! I have just longed for a ride in the war canoe,” and she hurried to do her part in clearing away the supper things.
“Cleo,” interfered Corene aside, so that Mackey would not overhear, “you know there is a real Scout way of doing dishes, and——”
“All right, Corey; but let’s do them any way to-night, so that they get done,” replied the little girl in the big gingham apron. “I just want to get down to the lake and out on the water before the sunset fades. Daddy and all the folks will be there——”
“Show-off!” taunted Madaline, the baby of the patrol. “Cleo thinks that canoe-riding is next best to horseback riding,” and she made a juggler’s pass to catch the plate that slipped through her dish-towel.
A half-hour later the Bobolink girls were down at the dock, the center of an admiring party which included some Camp Fire Girls, some girls from the Hikers Club, besides the usual scattering of summer girls, all piling on compliments for the day’s achievement in the opening of Camp Comalong. Miss Mackin wore her regular uniform, which she had with her, fortunately, and all together the patrol made a very creditable showing, as they took their places in the war canoe.
After some instructions from Miss Mackin, who, among other things, insisted upon “good form rather than speed,” they pulled out gracefully, the “Down Paddle” start having been executed by the eight doubles as precisely as if done by a simple stroke.
And wonder of wonders! There was a moving-picture man on shore, grinding his machine as if each grind depended on speed and not upon form, for only in a sudden burst of strong sunset light did the camera operator hope to get a picture of the Girl Scouts on Lake Hocomo.
“In the movies!” breathed Julia, dipping her paddle with such awe as might have been occasioned had some perfume stream sprung up through the many springs beneath the water’s surface. It was sweet, indeed, to be pictured thus, and not a Bobbie among them but felt a little tinge of pride when the boys shouted after them:
“You’ll be in the movies, girls!”
“Queer how much more important we are to-day than we were yesterday,” remarked Cleo analytically.
“Because yesterday we were girls, while to-day we are Scouts,” explained Mackey. “That’s the value of team play, you know. Now we will paddle in to the Point, and see that we make a perfect landing. That’s one thing we have to learn in good canoeing.”
Dip after dip took them gracefully down the lake to where the Point landing jutted out among all sorts of craft, the motor-boating being easily as common at the lakeside as is the “motor-caring” at any inland parkside.
“I hope we don’t jam them,” whispered Grace to Cleo, who was her canoe partner.
“If we have to jam anyone, I hope it’s that ‘streak’—you know, Grace, that queer bug-boat those girls from the hotel always ride in.”
“Why?” asked Grace, leaning closer.
“Because they’re snippy and call us ‘candy kids,’” replied Cleo. “It seems to me they look more like candy themselves, with their taffy hair and peppermint-striped bathing-suits.”
Grace silently agreed, and soon all the paddlers bent their interest and energy on making a perfect landing.
At the director’s signal they stopped paddling some little distance out, then steered past the flock of motor boats into the side of the dock, where as pretty a landing was made as the big Pedagogue ever had to her credit.
Miss Mackin and Corene sprang ashore first, and held the boat while the others quickly and alertly followed.
Again they were the center of an admiring throng, and again the Bobbies felt suffused with a pardonable pride. They were really the first group of Girl Scouts to be seen about the lake, and it was not surprising that they should attract some attention.
Some provisions for the next day were purchased, as the Point was the center of supplies for the colonists, then, after a half hour spent in recreation about the pier, the party embarked again and paddled back toward the camp landing.
The evening “had ripened” as Louise expressed it, and a calm mellowness seemed to settle over everything about the water and its shores.
“Let us try a song,” suggested Miss Mackin. “Who can lead?”
“Weasy!” came the chorus; and presently the newest version of popular songs, adjusted to the Girl Scout needs, with clever words that just fitted the tunes, were “tried” and rather successfully executed. The clear, true voice of Weasy carried along the more uncertain tones of Grace and Cleo, like chips of sound on the crest of a song wave, and once started the “sing” went merrily on until the home dock was finally reached.
A sigh of satisfaction ended the chorus. The Pedagogue was docked and stored for the night, although the interested Benny and his clan crawled under the big canoe “just for sport,” the Bobbies said good-night and turned back to the hills for their first night under the stars.
It was almost dark as they hurried along under the trees, and it was not by accident that each little girl clutched the arm of her companion. They needed the nearness on this first night, at any rate, and Cleo more than once cast a surreptitious glance back over the lake to Chipmunk cottage, where she knew, at that very moment, Daddy was looking campward and thinking of his little girl who had flown from the home nest for the first time.
But she trudged along eager for the big experience, even if conscious of its sentimental cost.
“One lantern will answer for us, I think,” said the director. “Shall we have a campfire and story to-night?”
“Oh, yes, surely!” replied Corene, who managed to frame first the same answer the others attempted.
The two big logs, between which the fire was to be built, were already in place, and it was now time for Julia to shine in her especial department. She undertook to build the stone oven for the cooking purposes, so she also included the responsibility of making place and arrangements for the campfire.
Following the camp manual “no paper nor excelsior nor other artificial means” were to be employed in the fire making, but instead the “punk” wood, gouged from the heart of a dry log, was placed in the “V” of the two big green logs; then the tiny twigs and light material were first piled up so that the “light with one match only” was successfully accomplished, and a merry blaze burst out to greet Julia and cheer her companions, almost before the others realized the fire was really started.
Every member of the little patrol stood looking on—spellbound. What is more inspiring than a campfire in the clearance, with the tent “hard by” and the sheltering trees overlooking?
“Oh, if only we could get the girl Peg, you know, to come down and join us,” sighed Grace.
“Let’s try,” suggested Cleo. “She seemed friendly and it won’t do any harm to try. I’ll go over the hill with you?”
“If Mackey will let us,” followed Grace. The other girls were finding seats on the big logs arranged at a safe distance from the fire, and when the director heard the request of Grace and Cleo, she agreed they might go over the hill to the cabin, if they kept to the path in front of the other camps and came directly back.
It was not yet dark and the two Bobbies started off on a merry chase, as usual. Near the cabin they met Shag, the big collie, and he made friends promptly, perhaps because they wore the same sort of brownish outfit his own mistress was usually dressed in.
“Shall we go right up and knock?” deliberated Cleo. Now that they faced the cabin they faced also its restrictions.
“No,” reflected Grace. “We had better call.”
Suiting the words to action she cupped her hands and “Whoo-hooed” once or twice; then waited.
No answer.
“Call, use her name,” suggested Cleo, leaving the duty to Grace.
“Peg! Peg-gee!” called Grace. “Hey—oh! Peg!” she trilled in a curly sort of call.
Shag seemed restless now and his manner was less confident. He didn’t wag so enthusiastically, but instead sniffed with suspicion.
Finally the cabin door opened and Peg appeared. She hurried down and met the girls where they waited.
“We came to bring you over to our first campfire,” Grace almost spluttered. She was excited and in a hurry to return to camp before the night should overtake them.
“Oh, I really couldn’t go!” protested Peg, but her voice was toned with a hint of regret.
“You’ve just got to,” said Cleo. “We are bandits and we’re going to kidnap you!” and quite as if the play had not been all planned, each Scout slipped her arm into the arms of Peg and urged her forward.
A ripple of girlish laughter answered the challenge, but Shag didn’t like it and he growled threateningly.
The girls stepped back for a moment, fearing the dog might attempt to interfere, when another figure appeared in the doorway. It was Aunt Carrie, and she very quickly and decidedly ordered Shag to “come here, sir,” which he did, by that time realizing his very natural mistake.
“Really, girls,” said Peg. “I do thank you for being so friendly, but I can’t go.”
“And this our first night on the grounds and you the original Scout!” sulked Cleo. “At any rate it is getting so dark I don’t see how we will dare go back alone.”
“You are a bandit,” laughed the stranger, “and I suppose——”
“That you must come,” Grace finished happily. “Hurry, do please! The fire is going high, just see it! And we may miss the story.”
“You stay here then,” ordered Peg rather shyly, “while I get my cape from Aunt Carrie. Shag will be sure to call for me later.”
Grace and Cleo danced a few steps while waiting, but in a very few moments Peg was back with her cape over her arm.
“I can’t tell you how surprised I am,” she admitted. “I so very seldom go calling.”
“But you are a Scout and you wouldn’t be unfriendly,” almost charged Cleo.
“Maybe that’s it,” returned Peg; and arm in arm the trio stumbled back to the campfire, for it was quite impossible to walk without stumbling when retarded by darkness from taking the jumps and jerks necessary to the ordeal.
When they reached Camp Comalong Mackey was just starting her story.
“And so the mystery of the ‘Pocket In Black Rock’ was finally cleared up,” ended the story teller, as the big smoldering log fell into the blaze and sent up a “fire-works” of spluttering embers.
The Bobbies hugged the line of waists that sat squat in front of the campfire. Peg had been accorded a seat of honor directly in front of the biggest blaze, and it was not possible to escape her sighs and gasps of rapt attention, as the thrills of the story were unwound, and she jumped up now and smiled so frankly into the face of the director that no shadow of doubt remained as to this strange girl’s sincerity.
“I have never had such a lovely time!” she declared with something of the social habit, “and I’m ever—so thankful to you and the girls.”
The Bobbies were all delighted. Somehow this little woods-girl was so picturesque and fitted in the scene so perfectly now, when the blaze lit up her entire form, as she stood outlined against the night—it was hard to imagine she was in any way queer!
But the next moment she had flung her cape over her shoulders, thrust her fingers into her mouth to make shriller the whistle she emitted, and when Shag leaped “into the ring” she said good-night, repeated it to each section of the group, and then was off with her dog, before the others could offer “to go with her over the hill” or even to ask her to come again.
Her abrupt departure left a sort of “hole in the group.” While she was there the others felt a fascination, that usually accorded to mystery, and perhaps she as much as Miss Mackin’s thrilling story had furnished the evening’s interest. But during all the time she exchanged no word even of comment, and some of the girls suspected that the “kidnapping” perpetrated by Grace and Cleo had been more real than imagined.
“What joy!” enthused Margaret, looking up to see if she could find the stars blinking after having her eyes glare-shot by the fire. “To think we are going to sleep out here in the woods!”
“And we must make our inspection now,” announced the careful director. “Corene, you are leader; get the lantern, please.”
Willingly the Scout mentioned sprang to obey, when the “plink-plink-plink” of Ukes, and a soft hum of voices stole down to their grounds.
“A serenade!” exclaimed Louise.
“Oh, goody! We will have more campfire!”
Presently the music filled the clearance, and, as suspected, the serenaders were upon the scene.
“The girls from Norm!” cried Julia. “Isn’t this just too lovely!”
Then sang the singers:
“There are girls that make us happy,
There are girls who make us sad,
There are girls who never can stop gig’ling
And they’re girls who make you awful mad!
But the girls we serenade this evening
With this ukeleled sing-a-song,
Are the Bobbies with our stolen Mackey,
In the lovely new Camp Comalong!’
The tune was borrowed from “Smiles” and the words, though a little rough on the edges, fitted in pretty well. And this was the beginning of the campfire concert. Two ukes and two mandolins, besides a real melodious banjo, composed the orchestra, and the Norms sang everything campy and collegiate, until Mackey declared she would simply have to put her Bobbies to bed.
Regret as real and keen as that usually expressed in a nursery at the same order, answered the summons, but the director was inexorable, and the Norms finally left in a path of complimentary protestations.
The inspection finished (nothing was found out of order on this, the very first night), the little campers presently found themselves in their “bunks.”
Such tittering, giggling and whispering!
Someone’s bed “sagged like a hammock” while another someone’s “humped like a hill.”
“I’m going to try to grow tall,” whispered Louise to Julia, her nearest neighbor. “Do you suppose the pines and tamaracks can stretch one out?” and she thrust her feet beyond the blanket confines.
Julia didn’t care if she shrank, and she whispered that secret; and so it went around from cot to cot until Miss Mackin called a final warning. Then things settled down at last, and only the trusty lantern that hung behind a screen in a sheltered spot outside the door, stood sentinel over the sleepers.
And they slept. Little gasps and sighs told of girlish dreams, and if Louise kicked her feet down too decidedly perhaps she was trying to grow; also when Julia humped up her knees and spoiled the entire effect of her pretty blanket, perhaps she was trying to shrink.
Then the inevitable happened. As it couldn’t be avoided it has to be told, in spite of the usual first night scare banality.
Cleo had just said something unintelligible and Corene answered with an alto groan, when there was a scream! It came from the end cot where Margaret slept.
Every one sat up as if a spring had been touched.
“Oh, mercy, look!” yelled a chorus.
They looked, and between the curtain blazed two immense eyes! Also there was a snorting sound!
“A bear!” cried Madaline. “See how tall he is!”
“Yes, look!” exclaimed Cleo, “his head is in—the trees!”
Miss Mackin’s flashlight had slipped from her hand, and it was while she fumbled in the dark for it that this dialogue was snapped off.
“Just wait a minute, and don’t get excited,” she begged so inadequately that Corene repeated:
“Excited!”
Her light recovered, she quickly turned the flash on the thing that was somehow fixed in the joining of the rear flaps of the tent.
“Oh, h-h-h!” screamed the chorus again.
“Nothing—but—a——” Miss Mackin stopped.
She was not sure just what it was, for an immense animal head was framed in the curtains it had poked itself between.
There was a continued volley of subdued shrieks from everyone until Cleo took aim with her shoe. She proved a first rate shot, for the animal blinked once and promptly withdrew.
“A cow! I heard him chew!” declared the little fat Madaline.
“But he has no horns,” argued Julia, trembling still, and trying to talk with a head covered in the blankets.
“It is a cow,” declared Miss Mackin. She was on her feet now, and had the tent flaps open. She had taken down the pole light from the front door, and now swung the lantern through the curtains in the rear. “See, there she goes! Poor Bossy just wanted to pay us a call. I didn’t know we had any cows around here.”
“All right there?” called a man’s voice, next.
“The officer!” declared Cleo not without a little squeak of joy. “That’s Dick Porter’s voice.”
“Yes, that’s the watchman,” agreed Miss Mackin, who had slipped on her heavy robe.
“All right, officer!” she called back. “But please drive the cow away.”
“Certainly,” came the reply through the night’s silence. “That cow has a habit of walking in her sleep,” and he laughed so good-naturedly that the Bobbies took the cue and laughed heartily themselves.
The director feared she would not get them quiet again in time to have even a reasonable amount of sleep, for what one didn’t think of the other suggested, until night was turned into a medley of utter nonsense, set off by such laughter as can only be enjoyed when she who laughs knows it’s against the rules to do so.
“Now, girls, no campfire to-morrow night if you do not stop within five minutes,” threatened Miss Mackin in desperation.
“All right, Mackey dear,” replied Cleo. “I’ll throw my other shoe at the first one that laughs.”
Then she yelled again. It was such a sudden outburst no one could question the humor that provoked it.
“Oh, Mackey dear,” she gulped between her spasms. “Do you think Bossie swallowed my new shoe?”
“We’ll chip in and buy you a new pair if you only will go to sleep, Bobbie dear,” begged the distracted director, and this time her appeal bore results.
But over the bend on Tamarack Hill another girl slept fitfully. Peg had broken her resolution to remain alone, and for that one beautiful evening she had been just like the others—a girl among girls!
And how overjoyed Aunt Carrie was! To have Peg run off and spend a happy evening with the Girl Scouts. Upon her return to the cabin no little queen could have received more loving attention.
“Now at last, Peggie dear, you have found friends,” the white-haired woman had declared. But Peg shook her bobbed head and refused to promise that she would keep up the friendship so auspiciously begun.
“You know, Carrie dear, I must not bring folks here yet,” Peg had protested, “and I shall never accept things nor friendship that I cannot fully return.”
So now Peg slept, dreaming of that magic campfire: hearing the story again of the pocket in the big black rock: now she felt Grace grasp her hands in delight and ecstasy with a little squeal of joy, and after it all she was alone again, with Shag sleeping at her door, with Aunt Carrie’s faithful night lamp making a little shaded starlight beneath the beam ceiling.
And she had cried a little and laughed a little, but at last it was all over, and now she would take Whirlwind out over the hills in the early morning and forget, if she could, the Bobbies and their magic campfire.
A shrill whistle shocked the girls back to consciousness.
“What’s that?” asked Cleo.
“Our ‘get-up’ call,” replied Corene. “Mackey’s whistle. At the big camp we always heard the bugles next.”
Whether woodnymphs were listening in that tent, or whether Corene’s remark provoked an uncanny echo, at that very moment a bugle blast sounded somewhere!
“Another serenade!” exclaimed Julia, settling into her new comfort, quite as if the bugle-blow were permission to defer rising time.
Miss Mackey was already dressed for the ten minute exercise drill. “The girls at Norm have no bugles, so we cannot be indebted to them this time,” she said.
“Maybe it’s friend cow bringing back my shoe,” chuckled Cleo.
Came the uncertain notes of the bugle again:
“We can’t get ’em up—up—up!” it stuttered frantically, unable to return to the first notes to repeat the strain.
The girls shuffled into slippers and bathrobes, the regular drill costumes, and Grace ventured to poke her head outside the tent.
“The boys!” she exclaimed. “There they go scamping off. Just gave us our first call, to tease, of course. Well, I’m glad something got Benny up. I wouldn’t wonder if the bugler blew him out first.”
“They’re gone,” repeated Miss Mackin good-naturedly, “and I suppose they think it was a great joke. Grace, couldn’t we borrow that bugle?”
“I’ll see; I think Clee could blow it; she does so well with a bicycle pump.”
Presently the Bobbies were outside; having reverently raised their colors, they raced off to the “drill field,” a little place cleared of brush and safe from the eyes even of Benny’s bugle squad. There, in bathing suits, they went through the setting up exercises, warranted to do everything in the way of providing health and beauty for Girl Scouts.
From that they raced off to the little cove in the lake, took a dip, which they would loved to have prolonged into a swim had Mackey not blown that police whistle; then back to camp, then washed and dressed and jumped out to their benches set around the new boarded table.
Washing between the trees, where twin cedars or other saplings were used to hold the basin bench, proved novel to those little girls, used to the white enamelled bathrooms at home; but it was fun, even if Julia did spill “every drop of the pitcher full of fresh water” and have to borrow from Margaret; and although Grace found her soap so slippery, it would roll off into the pine needles and when rescued look like a new sort of fuzzy-wuzzy chestnut. Altogether it was fun and frolic, and “good for what ails you,” as Cleo commented, when Madaline took to preaching about the wrongs of civilization.
“It’s all nonsense and mummy says so, for us to want hot and cold water all the time,” she declaimed from her perch on a stump where the towel was clear of the ground. “And this is good for us. Will make——”
“Men of us,” finished Cleo, who always loved to tease chubby, baby Madaline.
Corene had charge of breakfast, Julia was fireman, this picturesque duty appealing to her imaginative nature, and as she poked the embers in the stone furnace (of her own building) and sang, “Boil and bubble, toil and trouble,” she must have imagined the witches in Macbeth were stirring things up with their forked wands.
“Hungry! I’m starved!” declared Margaret. “Can’t seem to remember when I ate last. Please send me down that dish of apples.”
“Let us adhere to something of our regular table manners, girls,” said Miss Mackin from her place at the head of the board. “We don’t want the home folk to be blaming us for lost manners, when we go back. I know it does seem like fun to be free from most restrictions, but habits are so easily formed, and we can’t blame the home people for wanting us to go back to them better in every way.” Miss Mackin never dictated, she just “put things up to the girls” in a very pleasant manner.
Corene was serving the cereal while Julia kept things hot over the picturesque stone furnace.
“If you have enough cooked now we will all eat together, Corey,” said the director. “Just bring your coffee pot over here. I’ll pour!” She smiled broadly at that use of the social term.
“Let me cook the bacon,” begged Cleo. “I’ve heard daddy talk so often of camp bacon.” Her request was granted, and presently the bacon was sizzling from its wire string that ran from one end to the other of the furnace, each end being hooked on the iron poles, little gas pipes set up in the stones, with homemade hooks of tightly wound wire, the entire contrivance representing Julia’s idea of a camp “skillet” or “dangling spider.”
The bacon broiled very quickly, for the embers had reached a point of concentrated heat, and when Cleo forked her bacon off the wire its aroma might easily have attracted envious comments from the girls at Camp Norm.
“Did anything ever taste so good?” exclaimed Margaret.
“Shall we have baked potatoes for lunch?” asked Madaline, sending her cup down to Louise to have it refilled with milk.
“I’m to cook lunch,” replied Cleo, “and you may help, Madie. I know you always did love to bake things. Remember the day you burned the big angel cake?”
Madie remembered, but claimed a broader knowledge of the culinary art now.
The day’s programme provided something for every hour, and after breakfast it was to be a swim. The weather was ideal for this, their first experience in the “wide open,” so that a swim was eagerly anticipated now.
“Fix your bunks; inspection first, you know,” ordered the leader.
How jolly it was! And how worth while to do things this way, which was the right way for this particular occasion?
The beds and their surroundings passed the director’s inspection, and then came the swim.
“We are all good swimmers,” Julia insisted. “I don’t really think we need have Mackey with us, if she should want to do something else.”
“Oh, I go with you,” replied Mackey. “The water is a matter of particular responsibility, and being good swimmers would not excuse me in case of accident.”
“Mother always feels that way and insists on being along with us,” added Louise reflectively.
The dock was crowded when they reached the “bathing grounds.” They might have “gone in” at their own beach in the cove, but the rocks around that corner were jagged, and Mackey decided it would be better to take the dives from the regular springboard off the landing.
“I wish we would see Peg,” Grace said to Cleo. “I wonder where she goes in?”
“Never saw her in a bathing suit,” replied Cleo, “but I’m sure she’s a regular fish in the water. We’ll ask her to come with us next time we see her.”
“Do you suppose she works at anything?” Grace asked again.
“Why! How queer that you should think she works?” charged Cleo.
“Well, she does something. She wouldn’t ride away so early every morning just for pleasure; and Benny says he has seen her so often.”
A call to line up for a running dive interrupted the conversation, and presently the Bobbies quite forgot Peg, in their joy of a real swim in Lake Hocomo.
“Lots better than the ocean,” chugged Louise, just coming in from a long pull. “I never could try this stroke in the big waves,” and she dove back again to try the “crawl” in the smooth yet pleasantly warmed waters; for the lake was never very cold at the big open basin that surrounded this point.
“And no tide to worry about,” added Margaret.
However dear was the ocean when at the ocean they tarried, the Scouts had a happy faculty of shifting their affection, and now it was the “wonderful lake!”
Miss Mackin was watching the swimmers and she quickly observed those most proficient.
“Madaline, don’t go outside the float,” she cautioned. “That’s a pretty good swim for a little girl, I think.”
The smallest Bobbie turned to obey when those nearest her saw her give a sudden jerk and then she screamed!
“Oh, something has got me! Quick!”
Miss Mackin only had to put her hand out to reach the frightened child, but Madaline’s face showed pain and the director could not at once seem to assist her.
“My foot! Something’s got my foot!” she cried.
“A crab!” exclaimed Grace, swimming quickly to Madaline’s aid.
“Not in the lake!” protested Cleo.
By this time Miss Mackin had succeeded in freeing the very much frightened little Scout, and she was now leading her ashore. Madaline had drawn her foot between two rocks that came together so closely they formed a very formidable trap, and the only way a victim could get out was to back out of the wider end of the opening. There were rocks only on the lake bottom near shore, and most bathers soon became familiar with their location.
As if that trifling incident opened the way for further “frowns of Fate” the girls in the water presently had reason to scamper.
The criticized blondes, they who ran the “Bug,” that deformed motor boat, now deliberately turned the craft into the line of the swimmers. At first it seemed accidental, but when Grace and Julia turned in another direction and the “Bug” cut after them, they realized that the girls in the hideous striped bathing suits were giving them a chase.
Miss Mackin saw this from ashore and ran along the dock to the end of the pier. She called from there, and the girls in the queer squat boat seemed to take heed, for presently the boat made a complete circle and shot out again into the open lake.
“Come in, girls,” called the director. “Time’s up!”
“Oh, not one more swim?” begged Grace. But Corene said “no,” and everyone realized Corene’s experience with a director qualified her to dictate, so reluctantly they waded in and were soon back in camp, dressing for dinner.
“What do you think of those girls racing after us with their old motor boat?” Louise asked. They were looking rosy and feeling “frisky” after their swim, and the preparations for dinner (they had decided to have the main meal at noon), were aggravating in their appetizing lure.
“I think,” replied Julia, “we will have to look out for those ladies,” she wanted to say something more “descriptive,” but let it go at “ladies.”
“Why look out for them?” pressed Grace. She may have scented danger and “warmed to it,” for Grace had the reputation of daring and courage.
“Well, they didn’t seem to be ‘cutting up’ exactly, and they did steer their old bug-boat straight after us,” reasoned Julia. “Wonder where they stop?”
“I saw them on the grounds of the Fayette the other day,” said Madaline, “and one was in a hammock, with her feet sticking out and you could see her green silk stockings all the way from the corner.”
“Must have terrible long——” The dinner gong interrupted Grace’s sentence, for Corene was hammering her bread knife on the big tin tray with such startling results, that the very birds took fright and left the grounds before gathering the crumbs that might come to them from the table of the Bobbies.