CHAPTER VI
A LITTLE MAID IN CLOVER
"Do hurry, Madie, she may run away!" warned Cleo. They were hurrying indeed, and the request seemed superfluous, for never did three girls make more haste in crossing that stretch of meadow. In fact Grace and Cleo were running, and now Madaline jumped to their pace.
"Do you think maybe they keep goats?" the latter managed to ask, and in spite of their serious haste both Cleo and Grace shouted in laughter.
"Goats!" they both exclaimed.
"Because if they do I'm not going near the old place. I'm awfully afraid of goats and geese."
"Because you're so nice and fat!" teased Cleo. "You're afraid they'll take you for—for sausage. But—here we are! Don't let us frighten the child," and her voice was now lowered to a whisper.
The little girl, with the long brown braids, sat in a bed of beautiful pink clover, and with her back to the intruders she had not yet sensed their approach. As before, she wore a white dress and no hat.
"Hello!" spoke Grace cautiously.
She sprang up, but Cleo placed her hand kindly on the basket of ferns and clovers.
"Oh, don't go!" pleaded Cleo. "We want to talk to you."
"But I can't," faltered the child, and the rich cultured tone betrayed her good breeding. In fact she used the long "a" in can't and the girls at once decided she was English.
"Oh, why not?" Cleo followed up quickly. "Don't you want to know us?
We are strangers here."
"I should love to know you," the girl replied, and the tanned skin was suffused with a conscious blush, "but I am not permitted to make friends."
"But we are Girl Scouts," argued Grace, assuming her most cajoling air, "and we are supposed to make friends with everybody," she finished. Grace tactfully fondled a beautiful spray of clover that was making its way out of Mary's basket. This action evidently pleased the child, for she smiled, and handed the spray over to its admirer.
"I have read of Girl Scouts," answered the stranger, "and if only granddaddy would allow me what a wonderful time we could have! Do you all gather flowers in nature study, as your books say you should?"
"Oh, yes, indeed we do," replied Cleo heartily. "Do sit down on this little mound where you were when we came along, and let us have a nice quiet talk. No one is near to hear us!"
At that the strange girl glanced furtively toward a clump of blackberry bushes and put her finger to her lips.
"Reda is there, my nurse, you know, and she is very strict. I could win granddaddy over only for her," and the deep-set eyes seemed to freeze over in that glassy stare the girls had noticed before.
"Quick, tell us, where do you live? May we go to your house? Perhaps your grandfather would like us?" Cleo was crowding her questions, lest the woman called Reda should suddenly pounce upon them.
"Perhaps," said the girl, now so dreamy and vague the girls almost felt helpless to pursue their mission.
"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 pronounced 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 lasso 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 pronounced 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," pronounced 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.