They all laughed, but some one started up the song. However, this only encouraged the baby to beat harder upon his pan, so very soon laughter stopped this song, for, said Winnie, the accompaniment was anything but sweet and low.
The shadows were falling and pretty soon one girl and another gathered up her sewing and prepared to leave. Winnie displayed a fairly good buttonhole, Joanne viewed the last half of her hem with more satisfaction than she did the first, and decided that after all sewing was less of a bugbear than she had supposed, so she made up her mind to attempt a more ambitious piece of work which she could use as a test for her grade of Second Class Scout.
It had stopped raining, but Winnie insisted upon lending her a pair of rubbers, for Joanne declared she wanted to walk home since she had not taken outdoor exercise that day. Virgie bore away the baby who was persuaded to show off enough to shake a chubby hand in farewell, and the day which had begun so unpromisingly, ended in a gorgeous sunset.
Joanne walked home with Claudia Price who lived in her neighborhood. “Why weren’t you at school this morning?” inquired Claudia.
Joanne explained, adding, “I didn’t dream when I got up this morning that I should have really a busy, happy day. A few months ago I would be in bed with a headache after such a disappointment.”
Claudia laughed. “Is that your way of doing usually? What spared you this time?”
“The Girl Scouts,” replied Joanne gravely, “at least it was Winnie who set me on the right road. She called me a cry baby, which I was, and said I’d better work at some of my tests, a thing I hadn’t thought of doing, and when I looked into my handbook I came face to face with the law which says a Girl Scout must be cheerful, so there you are. Win was so funny, too, that I realized how silly I was to take a disappointment so to heart. Of course it was a disappointment.”
“It certainly was to all of us, but by this time our fun would be partly over, and now we have all of it still to look forward to.”
“So we have; I never thought of that, but there are lots of things I haven’t thought of. You see I have lived with grown-ups mostly and I am afraid I get to thinking about myself too much. It has never occurred to me till lately that I should think of what is best for other people. My grandmother humored me because I was delicate, and if my governess tried to make me do things I didn’t want to do I had only to cry and work myself into a headache and my grandmother would give in at once. I am just beginning to see what a mean, nasty way it was to act.”
“Well, there is one thing,” said Claudia cheerfully, “if you think it was a mean, nasty way,—I agree with you that it was,—you won’t want to keep it up, will you?”