The Girl Scout Pioneers Part 13

Out in Elmhurst, her next stop, a troop of girl scouts was drilling when she stepped off the train. New clothes and a better appearance, the result of that first pay at housework, had converted the mill girl into quite an attractive young lady, and as she waited at the pretty little square, watching the girl scouts drill, something like envy possessed her.

Why did they always seem so settled, so prosperous and satisfied!

What was there in a mere society that could do all that for any girl?

This question she asked almost audibly, for her lips moved and her face betrayed a puzzled and aggressive look of defiance.

It was always that way with Tessie. She fought first and investigated later. This unfortunate characteristic was responsible for much of her perversity. She set herself against conditions instead of trying to overcome them.

Never had her unhappy self felt more aggressive than now, as she watched those girl scouts drill, every peal of laughter they sent over the velvet green seemed to hiss at her, and every graceful valiant maneuver of wig-wagging or physical drill added deeper envy to her smoldering jealousy.

"That's the kind of thing Dagmar likes," she told herself. "Pity some movie man couldn't get that picture. It would go fine at a Sunday School mixup."

This last was another thrust at organized authority, but the thought of Dagmar recalled the scout badge.

"Humph!" she scoffed. "Guess I could fool them if I wanted to.

I'll bet none of them has this grand marshall headlight!"

Her hand was on the little bag wherein lay that badge. Its pin was entangled in threads of torn handkerchiefs, and its pretty clover leaf was enameled with caked face powder and candy dust.

For a few moments she considered slipping her hand in the bag and quickly pinning the badge on her pretty rose-colored sweater. Then she could walk over to the drilling troop, and introduce herself as a visiting scout, sure to be made welcome in Elmhurst.

"But they might catch me on their sign language," she decided.

"Guess I better wait until I get on to some of their deaf and dumb stuff."

So for the moment she was saved, but the temptation was too alluring to be easily vanquished. It was certain to return, and that in an hour when seeming necessity offered a more urgent excuse for its fulfillment. The scout badge in hands unconsecrated was like a holy thing surrounded by evil--it would maintain its own pure character unsullied, but evil mocked it--and the good, like a frightened little fairy, hid itself deep in girl-scout idealism, waiting for rescue.

Tessie was restive and unhappy. She had failed to gain by all her risks and daring adventure. Not only had she lost her place, but she had likewise lost her companions, and while unwilling to admit it the girl felt keenly the separation from Dagmar.

"All the same," she declared, taking a last look at the girls in their brown uniforms on the green square, "I'll be one of them some day. They don't have to be too particular about girls they are supposed to help. I'll give them a good chance to help little old Tessie," and with that prophetic statement, more important to her than the unhappy girl had any way of guessing, Tessie tried for one more "place" to earn a little more money, that she might eventually make her way toward a big city.

CHAPTER XIII

BROKEN FAITH

Following the directions given in her little printed slip cut from the "Help Wanted" column in the Leader, Tessie had no trouble in finding the place offered in such glowing terms. Every sort of inducement was held out in the printed lines, for obtaining help was a problem affording the most original methods of advertising, and each month wages seemed to climb another round in the ladder of higher salaries. The term "wages" went by the boards when the fifty-dollar-a-month notch was knocked in prosperity's payroll.

The position, it was not the old time "situation," demanded little of the applicant in the way of reference, and Tessie, already wise in her new craft-knew well a telephone call from Mrs. Elmwood to Mrs. Appleton would be sufficient guarantee of her honesty. She had been strictly honest even to the point of picking up a few scattered dimes, ostensibly dropped accidently, but really set down as "bait" to test her honesty. She was also very wise for so inexperienced a girl.

So with affirmative smiles the erstwhile employer engaged the nice-looking, bright-looking young girl, whose olive skin and dark eyes made her pretty, if a bit foreign and rather saucy.

"If Dagmar could see me now!" she mocked, patting the lace b.u.t.terfly cap on her neat hair and smoothing the lace sample of an ap.r.o.n in the most approved screen world style. "This dress must have been made for me, it fits so well," she commented, twirling around in front of the modern mirror furnished in the second maid's room, "and this house suits me very well," with a glance at the fine fixings all about her. "Now for the china and silver.

I'll bet I'll surprise this shebang with my knowledge of right and left, and my juggling with the forks and spoons. A new place is all right while it's new, but it gets old awful quick after--well, after pay day."

The black dress was stylishly short and gave Tessie a very chic appearance, in fact although she was seventeen years she looked much younger in the uniform, and she knew it.

Inevitably among the members of that household were two young girls from the scout troop she had seen drilling that afternoon, and quite as inevitably the table talk was entirely of the drill and other scout activities.

It was all so simple after that. There in the sisters' rooms were scout manuals, and these little blue books gave Tessie all the information she needed. Each day while arranging the rooms she was able to learn a lesson, and just when her statement was sure to make the best effect she treated the girls to a story of her "girl scout work." It was just like real fiction to Tessie, while Marcia and Phillis...o...b..rne could hardly believe their pretty puff-hidden ears that they should have right in their own home a real girl scout who had won a merit badge! Tessie positively declined to discuss the "brave deed" she had consummated to obtain that badge, also she refused just as positively to take any part in the scout work of Elmhurst. It was delectable to have the girls beg her to come to drill, and a.s.sure her no one need know she was employed as a waitress.

But Tessie "adored the pose" as she learned to think herself, and she had no idea of being caught in the official net of a scout meeting, where all sorts of questions might be asked, the answers to which could not even be hinted at in a scout manual.

Alma Benitz was the name she chose that night when Frank Apgar escorted her from his "ark" to his mother's hospitality, and that means of identification was serving her beautifully in the home of Mrs. J. Bennington Osborne, Terrace End, Elmhurst.

It was all perfectly thrilling and Tessie felt each day she mingled her "better days' smile" with a sob or a grin, for the benefit of her sympathetic spectators, she would have given a week's pay to have Dagmar seen the "hit" she was making.

"They'll be giving me French lessons if I don't watch out," she told her looking-gla.s.s one night, and the confidential mirror noticed the new girl actually sounded her "gs." Tessie was an apt pupil, but brains more than hands need training to execute exact science of "putting things over" all the time.

Also a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in this adventurer's chain was the fact that she had no means of communicating with her own folks or Dagmar, and receiving any reply from them. She knew her own father too well to risk letting him know anything of her whereabouts, and her two letters to Dagmar could not be answered for lack of address. Now Tessie had new clothes, and she would soon have more money--if only she could get hold of Dagmar, and start off again on that trip to the big city.

"Maybe the poor kid's in jail," she reflected. "She's just the kind to get sent up to one of those dumps where they train girls!

Train them!" she repeated mockingly. "Swell training a girl gets behind bars!

"But it would cost twenty-five dollars for both of us, and I'll never live through earning that here," she followed. This general summing up of the situation took place in her room, the night before her first "afternoon off" and suppose--just suppose she took a bunch of those scout tickets, and went out to the next town and sold them! She might use that money to send to Dagmar and replace it with her next week's pay!

So there was the temptation.

And she did not realize its dangers.

Nothing had ever been easier. Everyone wanted tickets for the Violet Shut-in Benefit and every ticket brought fifty cents to the attractive girl wearing the scout badge of merit.

"I call this luck, the kind that grows on bushes," she was thinking, as in that strange town she hurried from door to door with the violet bits of pasteboard that were printed to bring cheer to the Shut Ins.

"Of course I'll replace this at once," she also decided. "I wouldn't really touch a cent of this, even for one day, only I must get Daggie out of her trouble wherever she is. It isn't fair to leave her all alone to face the music."

Then came the thought of the possible joy she might experience if she could but surprise Phyllis and Marcia with the sale of all their tickets!

Still another consideration. Each girl was obliged to sell in a certain territory and she was covering enough ground for the whole troop.

"I guess I'm out of luck," she decided, "but this isn't so bad. I believe I'd make a hit as a first rate book agent. Maybe I'll try that next."

It was important that all her ground should be covered before the public school would be dismissed, hence she quickened her steps, and she had but two more tickets to dispose of when the rumbling of a jitney attracted her attention.

It was Frank Apgar on the high front seat of his Ark.

"Without thought of danger, and only the prospect of a pleasant chat with someone she knew, Tessie hailed Frank and climbed to the seat beside him.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you, Frank! How's the good old lady who saved my life? I'll always remember her as my guardian angel. And boy, those flap-jacks!"

"Mother's fine and she always asks if I see you. Now I'll have a report to make," and he stared so at Tessie she felt uncomfortable.

"What are you looking at?" she asked, her tone of voice condoning the rudeness of her words.

"I'm just thinkin' you look a lot like some one I've been asked to watch for. Did you light in from Flosston the night you crawled on this Ark without botherin' the gong or brakes?"

For a single second Tessie felt her fright would betray her. Then recovering her poise, with the keen necessity so obvious, she laughed a merry laugh empty in ring, but full enough in volume.