“Look!” she whispered.
“What is it?” gasped Lois when she had seen.
“Why, don’t you know?” Betty demanded. “We’ve simply got to get it; I’ll climb up the tree.”
“Be careful not to scare it,” cautioned Polly.
But there was no fear of that, for as soon as Betty reached the limb occupied by “it,” there was a scuffle, and she felt something land on her shoulder.
“I’ve got it, safe and sound,” she called to the girls below.
“Look how thin it is,” said Lois when Betty was again on terra firma. “Let’s take it back to school and feed it, it must have run away.”
“Of course we will—the darling—and—Oh, Polly, Lo, why didn’t we think of it the minute we saw it? We’ll have it for a mascot!”
That afternoon there was a very important team meeting in one of the classrooms. It lasted just a few minutes, but when the girls came out they were all smiling very mysteriously, and they seemed to be delighted about something.
There was a good deal of smuggling of food into the cellar, of which Mrs. Baird had given Betty the key.