The Girl Scout Pioneers Part 19

DAISIES AND DANGERS

In the week following Tessie made a number of acquaintances about Glenmoor, not the least among such being Frank Pierson, the grocer boy, and glad to see a young girl on the big estate, Frank promptly asked Tessie to take a ride out in the country with him some afternoon, and quite as promptly, Tessie accepted the invitation.

"I have to deliver out Flosston way tomorrow," said Frank. "What do you say to coming along?"

"Flosston!" repeated Tessie. She hesitated. Would she risk taking a look at the town in the mill end of which were still located the deserted members of her family?

"What's the matter? Don't you want to go?" pressed Frank, as she withheld her reply.

"Oh, yes, of course I'll go," Tessie answered then, and having said she would go, the question of caution seemed to have solved itself. After all, the grocer would have no business in the factory district, and it would be so good to see the familiar places again. Since her coming to Jacqueline's everything seemed so much brighter, her old fears of capture and perhaps detention in a corrective inst.i.tution, had almost disappeared, and the prospect of a country ride with Frank Pierson afforded pleasant speculation indeed.

"You may bring me a big bunch of daisies," Jacqueline told her, in granting permission for the afternoon out. "Since you came I have almost lost Jerry. But then, he was so very good, I am sure he should have been given a vacation."

The little grocery wagon did not have to delay for its pa.s.senger when next afternoon Prank, with a clean blouse and his cap at exactly the right tilt, called to deliver goods and "collect"

Tessie.

Starting out along the broad avenue, Gyp, the brown horse, jauntily drew the light yellow wagon, holding his head up quite as proudly as any flashy cob that pa.s.sed with the fancy equipage in turn-out for the lovely afternoon driving. Presently, from the fashionable thoroughfare Frank turned into the "Old Road," that wended along railroad and river lines out Flosston way.

"You can drive here," he conceded, handing the reins to Tessie. "I don't have to make another stop for half a mile."

"I used to drive long ago, when I was a little girl with pigtails," she answered, taking the lines. "Gyp is gentle, isn't he?"

"Yep, mostly he is. But he scares up, once in a while. Doesn't like an umbrella shot up under his nose, and I've seen him dance at a postal card flaring up with the wind."

Entering Flosston, Tessie felt more emotion than she expected to experience. That last night in the town, when she and Dagmar waited at the station; their dispute over the road they should take; the finding of the badge, and the return of the girl scouts in search of it: all this surged over her like a cloud, covering the bright sunshine that danced through the trees. Frank evidently observed her preoccupation, for he made frantic efforts to be especially entertaining.

Once, when the post-office clerk emerged from the drug-store, Tessie pulled her hat down until the pin at back tugged viciously in her coil of black hair. That clerk might recognize her, and her folks surely called for mail occasionally. But the clerk never raised his head, as Gyp sauntered along, and it was a relief to make sure that her new and different outfit was a complete disguise. No one would now recognize her as Tessie Wartliz, of Fluffdown Mills.

"I have to get Miss Dougla.s.s some daisies. See that lovely field over there! Could we stop long enough for me to gather a bunch?"

she asked Frank presently.

"Sure thing!" replied the boy merrily. "I only have to turn in a few more boxes, and then my time's my own. Sometimes I take my sister Bessie when I come out here, and once mother came. But she wanted to knit. Can you beat that: knitting on a grocery wagon?"

"Oh, folks who like it knit in their sleep, I guess," replied Tessie, giving the reins to Frank that he might turn safely into the field over the rough little hill at the roadside.

"And say," went on Frank, "I put a chair in back for ma, and rode along the avenue as innocent as a lamb. Of course I was whistling and can you guess what happened?"

"Mother went out the back way?" asked Tessie.

"Surest thing you know. I looks back, and there went ma and her cane-seat chair, doing a regular cake-walk, along the boulevard.

Oh, man! What she didn't say to me!" and Frank shouted a laugh that made Gyp jump clear over the last hillock.

"Best to sit on stationary seats when one goes grocery riding,"

commented Tessie. "Now I'll pick daisies, and you can whistle all you like."

"But I'm goin' to pick," insisted Frank. "I'll race you," and with the boy's proverbial love of sport, even picking daisies became a novel game.

It took but a short time to fill arms with the plentiful white blossoms, tacked on their green stems with gold b.u.t.tons, and presently Tessie was ready to embark again, after Frank had deposited both bunches of daisies in an empty box back of the seat.

Out on the road once more, Tessie caught sight of a girl she knew well. It was Nettie Paine, who sold spools of crochet cotton in the little fancy shop, and how glad Tessie would be to stop and buy a few spools just now! She could make such a pretty camisole top--but--no, it would be foolish to take such a risk. So she reluctantly turned her head away from the fancy-goods store.

"Now, just one more stop!" Frank announced. "I have to buy some things at the stationers. You hold Gyp in, Stacia. We're quite near the track, and he doesn't love the Limited Express."

But Stacia (or Tessie) allowed the reins to lay loosely in her lap as she watched a girl scout in uniform approach. She was alone and tramped with a sure tread that might have marked her a True Tred had Tessie any knowledge of the troop's name. "Those girls are everywhere," she told herself, and then fell to day dreams of girl scout possibilities.

Buried in thought, Tessie forgot Frank's warning to look out for the express, until a shrill whistle rent the air and Gyp sprang forward, almost tossing the girl from her seat on the wagon.

Frantically she yelled at the little horse to "Whoa!" But on he dashed, and the gates were down directly ahead!

Realizing her danger and leaning forward in her panic of fear, something happened to the rein, for she felt it fall, and even the power of pulling on Gyp's head was now lost.

And the express could be seen rounding the curve!

Prayers rose to Tessie's lips while terror gripped her heart.

Moments were like hours, yet time had no proportion in the fear of death that seemed almost certain.

Then just as the frightened little animal shied clear of a telegraph pole, and with head high in the air seemed to make a final dash, he was suddenly pulled back. The jolt threw Tessie against the side curtain.

The little girl scout--she whom Tessie had noticed but a few minutes before, was now hanging on the reins!

But Gyp was dragging her on. Would she, too, be killed? If some man would only come to their rescue!

Then everything seemed to whirl before Tessie's distorted vision.

Things "got black and went out." Next, she felt herself tumble back in the box of daisies.

But Gyp had stopped! The girl scout had pulled him up somehow, and now Frank was there talking, and shouting, and praising the girl who had saved Tessie's life.

"And she wouldn't even give her name," he was calling to Tessie.

"Some narrow escape, I'll say. Why, that express no more than shot by when you touched the gates. If you hadn't looked so dead, I might have got that girl's name, but she's in one of those cottages by now. Well, we'll beat it for home," and he turned cautiously into the broader roadway. "Gyp, you'll go on a light diet for this, see if you don't!"

But all the joy of her lovely ride was erased in the perilous experience. And again the influence of the girl scouts forced its way into her uncertain life. Truly the little heroes in that modest uniform deserved such merit badges as the one so lately given to Jacqueline Dougla.s.s.

But it would not be wise to recount to the invalid child anything of this wild adventure. This Tessie felt instinctively.

Nevertheless, when that night Jacqueline was placed in her dining chair, and while chatting with her brother she proudly displayed the clover leaf pin in a new little velvet case, Tessie wondered what could have been the original feat of heroism for which this badge had been bestowed.

"And the girl who saved my life deserves the highest award," she reflected, "although no one will ever know, I suppose. She risked her own life in the attempt." Such was Tessie's decision, while that little scout was congratulating herself on having really saved a life "without anyone knowing who did it." She had HER secret now and it was delightful to cuddle so securely in her happy little heart.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FLYING SQUADRON

"Oh, Grace, what do you think?" Thus asked Madaline without hint or warning.