“She hadn’t a chance to do anything much, for after I had got my bearings I rushed madly to Cousin Sue Pattison and she straightened me out so that I wrote a note of apology and my bark sailed on serenely.”
“Good girl!” Claudia patted her on the back approvingly. “I’ll bet it took courage to eat that piece of humble pie.”
“I’ll say it did,” returned Joanne with a little laugh at her bit of slang, “but it was soon over and I don’t mean to let myself go so rambunctiously again; it doesn’t pay, I find. You girls should know Cousin Sue; she is the dearest thing. I don’t know what I should do without her. We have been such friends ever since that horrid time.”
“If she is anything like Mr. Pattison she must be a peach,” declared Winnie.
“She is just as much of a peach but a different variety,” replied Joanne. “Well, girls, I want to say this, that you are not to consider me at all in the going to the lodge. You are to go and have the very best sort of time. It will make me very unhappy if you back out. I want you to use Chico all that is good for him and I want you to be nice to Pablo. As long as confessions are in the air, I may as well tell you that at first I was so mad that I vowed no one should ride Chico if I couldn’t, and I was ready to fight any one who dared to suggest riding him.”
“But now you have come down from your high horse,” said Winnie.
“Not my high horse; my little pony,” retorted Joanne brightly.
“Well, if you can joke about it, I should say you had recovered entirely from your mad,” said Claudia. “Listen, girls, I don’t think we’d better say anything about Jo’s not going, at least not yet. It will stir up such a rumpus, and the girls will jabber over the pros and cons till they are blue in the face. We won’t spring it on them till the very last. I must say, Jo, that I think you’re tremendously generous. If it were my cousin’s place and my pony, I’d rebel, I’m sure.”
Joanne looked at her with a queer little smile. “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, “at least, not for long, because you are a Girl Scout.”
Claudia gave her a hug, then and there, in spite of the fact that they were by no means without observers. “You dear, sweet little thing,” she cried; “you’ll sail in ahead of all of us, if we don’t look out.”