The Girl Scouts at Bellaire Part 5

"Do tell us where, please!" pleaded Grace, watching the bushes swish back from the place she felt Reda was concealed in.

"By the big twin chestnuts," replied the child.

"What is your name?" asked Cleo eagerly.

"Maid Mary!" again came an answer, but the little stranger was now moving off in spite of all the efforts being made to detain her.

Madaline was almost too far away to take part in the conversation, she was plainly afraid of the woman in the bushes.

"What is the rest of your name--Mary what?" insisted Grace.

"Reda says it is only Maid Mary, but I know the rest of it, and some day I am going to tell it!" flashed the child with a sudden blaze of defiance.

"Where are the twin chestnuts?" asked Cleo, determined not to thus leave the clew they had so eagerly sought.

"Over the mountain by the lake," replied Mary, and "Good-by," she almost sobbed. "I love you! There!" she cried, springing over the little stream at their feet, just as the unwelcome figure of old Reda emerged from the blackberry patch.

The girls stood staring at the fleeing child. They saw the old women put her hand up to shade her eyes, that she might better see who they were, for undoubtedly she suspected Mary had spoken to them. Then Cleo whispered to Grace:

"Make believe picking something! Don't let her see us looking."

"Here are some more!" called Grace loudly to Madaline, waving a bunch of quickly gathered daisies and clover. "Wait a minute, and see this one."

The call was given to throw the old woman off the track, and give her the impression that nothing more than flower gathering had been their intent.

Madaline appeared glad enough to see Grace and Cleo coming toward her, for at that very moment she had decided to run.

"Can you see what--the old woman is doing?" Grace asked Cleo. "Don't look--back--directly but stop to pick up something, then you can see."

"She must be scolding," replied Cleo, "for she's wagging her head, and shaking her old brown fist. Dear me, how I hated to let her swallow up that lovely girl. Do you suppose we can ever rescue her?"

"Do I?" flaunted Grace. "I just can't wait to get at that rescuing. I guess all our scouting will have to come back to a S.O.S., for never was there a clearer case of need than this. That hateful old woman has the child hoodooed, or hypnotized, or flimflammed," she declared, giving a wide choice of active transitive verbs for Cleo to choose from.

"But isn't the girl a darling?" enthused Cleo. "I could just love her like a picture in a book. And she said she loved us! Wasn't that quaint!"

"Oh, Madaline! You missed it!" Grace charged the girl who was too timid to interview Maid Mary. "We are going to find her house. And she's just _wonderful_." This last was p.r.o.nounced with that effusion peculiar to the modern use of the word "wonderful." Nothing could possibly be more or at least so superlative.

"Why didn't you la.s.so the old woman?" teased Madaline, referring to the trick Grace played on another occasion told in our first volume.

"I would have, only you were too far away to pull the rope!" fired back Grace. Nevertheless her tone implied she would not stop at rope or swing, if she found such a feat necessary in the rescue of Maid Mary.

"What a queer name--Reda," Cleo reflected, when once again they started over the rough road toward Cragsnook. "It ought to be p.r.o.nounced as it is spelled instead of 'ree'--she looks red enough in that blazing outfit."

"But what a pretty accent the girl used," remarked Grace. "Do you suppose she's English?"

"Maybe from Boston," suggested Cleo, "but the old woman, I should judge, is a native of the whole geography, well beaten with an oceanic egg beater, or if not that conglomeration, I should guess she owned an entire island in the wildest ocean, where there were nothing but ship-wrecked rummage sails and old crow squaks."

"That's bad enough, anyway," commented Madaline, who seemed a trifle out of the picture, "and I think she is all of that and more."

"Just you watch the True-Treds make for the twin chestnuts!" orated Cleo. "Old Lady Reda had better look out for her lace sun bonnet and flowered petticoat. They may get mixed up in the shuffle."

"How about grandpop?" asked Grace. "What do you propose to do with him?"

"Smother him in his 'yarbs' and roots," p.r.o.nounced Cleo dramatically, and when they entered the path to Cragsnook, busy brains were concocting marvelously daring schemes to bring about the rescue of Maid Mary.

"Do you think your Aunt Audrey will mind?" questioned Madaline, always sure to find an alibi for anything too risky.

"No, indeed," stoutly declared Cleo. "I shouldn't wonder but she would want to adopt Maid Mary for a model, with those Marguerite braids, and her far-away eyes. Oh, isn't it too exciting? Do you think we need tell Jennie?"

"I--wouldn't," replied Grace, fully conscious such a risk was not to be even thought of.

Madaline was a nice little fat dimply girl, and no one could blame her for not wanting to run from horrid old women up on mountain tops, nevertheless she had never failed in her own peculiar way of performing scout duties, and even the braver girls loved her baby ways of accomplishing the tasks.

CHAPTER VII

WITHIN A MOUNTAIN CAVE

Mrs. Dunbar was busy in New York, taking an active part in an art convention, nevertheless she made a flying trip out to Cragsnook that afternoon, to make sure her young guests were happy and well. Being real girls and therefore pardonably human, in telling their adventure, the scouts did not enlarge on their meeting with Maid Mary; in fact the detail involving the displeasure of Reda, the old nurse, was quite lightly pa.s.sed over in their account of the day as made to the hostess.

Mrs. Dunbar enjoyed the joke perpetrated by Madaline, in her suspicion of a possible goat farm being tucked away in the mountains, thence Maid Mary and the pompous Reda were wont to lug the roots; at the same time she felt unequal to a better guess at the puzzle, for it was now conspicuously clear that roots, all kinds of roots, were being gathered continuously by the little girl and her picturesque attendant.

The three visitors and Mrs. Dunbar were enjoying a refreshing west wind on the square porch, outside the library window, for their confab, and in their summer uniforms the girls made a picture not wasted on the artistic eye of Audrey Harris Dunbar.

"I can truthfully report," she remarked, smiling graciously and betraying considerable of her own good looks, "that you three little girls are already much improved by your visit. I have to make out a blanket statement, as we say in club work, when we make one report cover a number of items, and I would just like to ill.u.s.trate that statement with a color picture of you girls. You are positively rosy."

The compliment was plainly merited, for Madaline and, Grace had taken on a generous coating of tan and color, and even Cleo's usually pale face was prettily suffused with a sh.e.l.l-pink glow, which brightened her gray eyes, and enhanced the attractive effect of a face all but plain, too keenly intelligent to be overlooked in beauty.

"We all feel better for getting back in service," Cleo replied to her aunt's favorable criticism. "I guess even vacation needs a little duty to keep the play part happily outlined."

"Yes, little niece, you show your daddy's wisdom there, and of course that means you are very like me," with a swoop of her graceful arm coming up to the breast in mock dramatic fashion. "I always knew brother Kimball and I were very much alike, and now I am positive. Of course Kim aimed to be practical, and he has succeeded, while I--just slosh around in my paints. But really, children, I must be off again to that convention. I suppose we will plan to make interior decorations in mural designs around the Capitol dome, to give neighborly effect to our friends in Mars or Saturn or even Venus. Now be good," and she embraced all three with her affectionate smile, "go hunting if you like, but better take Lucille or Lalia along. They are older, you know, and should be wiser, although you have quite astonished me with your applied good sense thus far. I shall send a be-ee-u-tiful report to Flosston. You know, of course, the factory is moving headquarters to New York, and all your families may tour this way eventually. By-by! I hate to go, but I can't let the other ladies do all the gold work on the Capitol."

Sheer admiration silenced the girls for some moments after her departure. Audrey Dunbar seemed like a breath of the refreshing west wind herself, and it was not to be wondered at that her guests should appreciate her generous hospitality and personal attention.

"Shall we have to take Lucille and Lalia?" It was Grace who put the gloomy question.

"I don't know," faltered Cleo. "You see, we don't really know what we may fall into on the other side of the mountain."

"Maybe bandits and caves--and--things," suggested Madaline, characteristically.

"There might be caves, natural ones, I mean," Cleo remarked, "but I don't fancy we would run into any real live bandits, Mally Mack and Jack Hagan seem to monopolize that t.i.tle in Bellaire, and you know what perfectly little gallants they both are. But we have to live up to our reputation, I suppose, and be wise. It might be wisest to take the big girls along. When, do you suppose, will we ever be cla.s.sed as big girls?" she almost grumbled.

"Then suppose I run over and see if they can go," Grace proposed, showing her impatience to be on the trail. "A shower might come up and then we couldn't go until to-morrow."

"All right," agreed Cleo. "I'll address the postals while you run over. I see you have both written letters home on your cards."

"And I am going into the garden with Jennie," declared Madaline. "You won't really mind, Cleo, if I don't go along?"