“Come, Jo, don’t you want to take me up-stairs to wash my hands?” said Mrs. Pattison, feeling it wise to leave the subject at this point.
Joanne was only too glad to get her cousin off to herself, and when they had reached the next floor she fell upon her with a mighty hug. “Oh, you precious darling,” she cried, “I could squeeze you to pieces.”
“Please don’t,” returned Mrs. Pattison, “for I really want to take some of me to Kate’s. Wasn’t it fun, Jo?”
Joanne giggled. “It was simply great. I could scarcely keep my face straight when you said that about the sanitarium.”
“I believe that really did the business. You’ll have to get Miss Dodge here and have her talk a great deal about First Aid and Health rules and all that.”
“I’ll do that very thing. Gradda doesn’t take us seriously at all. You’d think the Girl Scouts nothing but some sort of club where the girls did nothing but amuse themselves.”
“She’ll realize the practical part in time. She doesn’t absorb a new idea very quickly; she isn’t built that way,” said Mrs. Pattison as she lathered her hands. “What team work is your troop doing just now?”
“We’re trying to raise the money to buy canteens for a troop of girls that are too poor to raise it for themselves; working girls, they are, most of them.”
“A good cause. I’ll give a quarter toward that. Just wait till I dry my hands.”
“How lovely of you! But there’s no hurry.”