Hal pulled a pad from his pocket and Chet, supplying a pencil, wrote:
“To the Girl Scouts of Sunflower Troop—greeting! You are invited to supper on Longshanks Island to-morrow afternoon. Boats will meet you at five o’clock at the wharf by the mill on Stony Creek.
Signed:
Hal Fosdick,
Chet Lacey.”
Hal read the note which Chet handed him. “You don’t say it is the troop that invites them,” he criticized.
“No, it makes it more mysterious not to say that. Girls love mysteries; they won’t know whether just you and I are camping up there or whether it is the whole outfit; we’ll just leave ’em in doubt till they get up there.”
Hal nodded approval, and after pinning the note to one of the rough cedar posts of the porch they went off to mount the hill behind the lodge.
Joanne’s sharp eyes were the first to discover the note when the girls returned with berry-stained fingers but with brimming buckets. “Look! look!” she cried. “See what I’ve found.”
Miss Dodge took the note which Joanne handed to her, and, after glancing over the contents, read it aloud.
Immediately she was overwhelmed by questions: “Oh, Miss Dodge, you will let us go, won’t you? Did you know the boys were there? Is it the whole troop of Boy Scouts or just those two? Did you know about their inviting us? When did they come?”
“Stop, stop, girls, and take breath,” said Miss Dodge. “I don’t know any more about it than you do, but perhaps Miss Chesney does; do you, Nan?”