The Girl Scout Pioneers Part 6

Dagmar realized this action was taken out of sheer delicacy. And she was very thankful to be left alone with her food. After all it was not so bad to be arrested, if all jail sentences were served in such nice clean kitchens, thought the girl.

But the reflection of a girl scout meeting at Flosston, and the stinging memory of the honor badge, picked up that night and carried off by the reckless Tessie, would torture her in spite of the more important issues in the girl's experience.

Where would Tessie go? Where would she stay and what would become of her? No doubt, as the officer had remarked, such a girl would easily become the prey of the unscrupulous, and at this thought Dagmar shuddered. What dreadful things always happen to runaway girls in the movies? Again the standard a.s.serted its power.

Next moment the opening door announced Mrs. Cosgrove was back, and Dagmar had "cleaned her plate."

"There now, you will feel better," and the woman quickly gathered up the tea dishes. "Come in the other room, and tell me your story before Jim comes back; sometimes a woman can help a girl more than a man can, and, as Jim says, I am sort of a wedge between the law and the victim," and she laughed lightly at the idea of interfering with her husband's business.

Dagmar told her story. She did not spare herself or attempt to cover her mistakes. She had left home because she was tired of Milltown and because she thought she would be better able to help her folks by getting out of the factory. Yes, she had listened to Tessie, and Tessie was different. Her mother allowed her out late nights, and had no objections to her going to dances in the factory hall, without brother or father. When Dagmar went her brother Frank always accompanied her.

"Well, that's encouraging," spoke Mrs. Cosgrove when Dagmar paused. "When folks have that much sense you can always talk to them. Now, when Molly comes we will talk it over with her. I wouldn't mind leaving off my work to-morrow, although I did plan to clean the cellar, and I could go out and see your mother--that is, if Molly thought there would be a chance for work for you here, and perhaps we could fix it so you could stay for a while anyway. I don't believe it would do you good to go right back in that crowd again. What you need is new chums."

"Oh, I couldn't give you all that trouble," objected Dagmar. "I am willing to go right back in the morning."

"It's right you should say so," continued the wise woman, "but you see, my girl, when you go back, you get right in the same rut again, and all those mill girls would just make life miserable for you. I am not encouraging you to stay away from home, but as Molly says, she is a leader in the scout girls you know--she always says when a thing goes wrong in one place it is best to try it in another. That is if the thing must be done, and, of course, you must work. However, wait until Molly comes in. She has learned so much since she has tried to teach others that I do believe she knows more than I do."

"You say she is a scout lieutenant?"

"Yes, they only take girls eighteen or over for that office and my Molly was eighteen two days before she was elected," and at the thought Mrs. Cosgrove indulged in a satisfactory chuckle.

It was all very bewildering to Dagmar, but just how it happened that she did not return to Flosston immediately was due to a very interesting plan made by Molly and co-operated in by her official father, and finally worked out by the near-official mother.

CHAPTER VI

A NOVEL JAIL

Thus it was that the girl scouts of Flosston and Lieutenant Molly Cosgrove of Franklin stumbled over the same case of a sister in need.

Returning from the big rally at the County Headquarters on that eventful evening, Molly Cosgrove found more than her usual hot cup of tea awaiting her. There was the strange young girl with the wonderful blue eyes, around which a telltale pink rim outlined the long silky lashes.

Molly thought she had never seen a prettier girl, while in turn Dagmar decided Molly Cosgrove was the very biggest, dearest, n.o.blest girl she had ever seen. Formalities over, talk of the rally quickly put the stranger at ease.

"We had a wonderful rally," Molly enthused, "and at a business meeting held before the open session, it was decided to start obtaining recruits from the mills."

"Oh, that will be splendid!" exclaimed Dagmar, who now felt quite at home with the Cosgroves. "We have always wanted to know about those girl scouts."

"Well, you will soon have an opportunity," continued the girl, whose cheeks still glowed with rally excitement, "and I am a member of the committee appointed to visit the mills."

"That is just the thing," declared Mrs. Cosgrove, "for your boss always lets you follow the Troop orders, and by going into Flosston you may fix it for this scared little girl to stay here for a while."

"There, Mother, I always said you should be on the pay-roll. Isn't she the loveliest cop?" Molly asked Dagmar. "No wonder the Town Council thanked Mrs. Jim Cosgrove for her work among the women and girls! Why, Mom, you are a born welfare worker, and could easily have my position in the Mill. You see, I am what they call a welfare worker," again Molly addressed Dagmar directly.

"Oh, yes, I know. We have one in the Fluffdown Mill. Her name is Miss Mathews but she hardly ever comes in our room," offered Dagmar.

"Well, now Molly," said Mrs. Cosgrove very decidedly, "I just mentioned we might see that the girl got work in new surroundings, with you and me to keep an eye on her, so she could cut away from that crowd. What I have been able to find out is not much to its credit and there's reasons (with a look that pointed at Dagmar's beauty) why a girl like this should not run wild. It seems to me,"

smoothing out her big ap.r.o.n, by way of punctuation, "that it has all happened for the best. We can fix it so Pop won't make it an arrest after all, then you can get leave to go to Flosston first thing in the morning, can't you?"

"Oh, yes, the welfare work of all the big mills is co-related,"

replied the daughter, while the mother put her feet on the little velvet ha.s.sock, and seemed glad of the chance to draw her breath after the long speech.

Dagmar was sitting in one of the narrow arm chairs of the old- fashioned parlor suite. Her long, rather shapely hands traced the lines and cross-bars in her plaid skirt, and the sudden shifting of her gaze, from one speaker to the other, betrayed the nervousness she was laboring under.

"All right then, that's one more thing settled. And do you think the girl--say, girl, I don't like that name you have, what else can we call you?" she broke off suddenly with this question to Dagmar.

"My name is Dagmar Bosika, and I like Bosika best," replied the little stranger.

"All right, that's number three settled. You will be Bose. I can say that, but I never could think of the other queer foreign name."

"And we will have to change your last name, too, I guess," put in Molly, "as some one from Flosston might recognize it. We can just leave off the first syllable and have it Rose Dix or Dixon. I think Dixon would sound best."

"We are settling quite a few points," laughed Mrs. Cosgrove, "if some one doesn't upset them. I have no fears from Pop--"

"Oh, Pop is putty in our hands," went on the resourceful Molly, "no danger from his end. But how about your folks, Rose?"

Dagmar smiled before she replied. The new name struck on her ear a little oddly, but it pleased her, she had never liked Dagmar, and utterly despised the mill girls' nickname "Daggie."

"Mother and father have always said they would let me do what I thought would be best for me," she said at length. "I never did anything they told me I should not, and we often talked of my getting in a store or something like that. Mother works in the mill in another room, and she was always worried about me being away from her."

"A store would be no good for you," objected Mrs. Cosgrove, again including the girl's beauty in her scrutiny. "You would be best off within the reach of a welfare worker like Molly. But look at the time! Martin will be in from the club, and even Dad will be comin' around for his midnight coffee, before we call this meetin'

to a halt. I say, Molly, we are runnin' an opposition scout meetin' it seems to me," and she got up with that finality, which plainly puts the period to all conversation.

A few moments later Rose had washed face and hands, brushed her hair, as Molly kindly hinted she should, and taking her shabby, washed, but unironed, night dress from the famous "telescope," she said her prayers and was ready for bed. How comfortable the room seemed! How strange she should be in it? And where was the unfortunate, headstrong Tessie?

A prayer for the safety of the wandering one sprung from the heart of this other girl, now away from home the very first night in her young life. That her mother would believe her at a girl's home, according to the little note left stuck in her looking gla.s.s, Rose was quite certain, so there was no need to worry concerning distress from the home circle, at least not yet, and tomorrow morning young Miss Cosgrove would go to the mill and very quietly arrange everything with her mother.

"The girl scouts are better than the police," she decided, not quite understanding how both could work so intimately, along different lines, yet each reaching the same result to a.s.sist wayward girls.

This was, surely, a queer sort of arrest, a lovely kind of cell, and a most friendly pair of jailers, the little runaway had fallen among, and that she dreamed wonderful dreams, glowing with roses and fragrant with perfume, was not to be wondered at, for Mrs.

Cosgrove's linen was sweet enough to induce even more delicious fancies.

But what of poor, lost, erring, headstrong Tessie Warlitz? Rose imagined her in all sorts of wild predicaments, but with that kindness so marked in girls who have themselves suffered cruel misunderstandings, Rose determined not to betray her chum, but rather to do her utmost to find her, and win her back to good standing among girls--somehow. Thus really began in so subtle a manner her own interest in the principles of the Girl Scouts.

"To help an erring sister" is a fundamental of the cause, but Rose little knew what that silent consecration would cost her. When all was quiet, late that night, young Martin Cosgrove sauntered along home and giving the familiar "three dots and a dash" whistle notified his mother of his approach. The light in the sitting-room window had in its turn told Martin his mother awaited him.

"S-s-sh!" whispered the mother, opening the door very softly.

"Don't make any noise."

"What's up or who's sick?" asked the good-looking young man, pinching his mother's plump arm.

"There's a little girl asleep in the spare room. Don't wake her,"

cautioned the mother, who, to prevent even a hat falling, had secured Martin's things and was putting them on the rack.

"Friend of Molly's? Some new girl scout?" he asked, when they reached the seclusion of the kitchen.