The leader withdrew, and Queenie escorted Marjorie to the seat at the table. The other girls brought chairs from the corners of the room and arranged them in front of her.
“I’d just like to talk tonight,” began Marjorie nervously. “If we——”
“Oh, it’s a lecture, is it?” giggled Gertie Reed. “If it’s goin’ to be like prayer-meetin’——”
“Shut up, Fattie!” interrupted Queenie, noting Marjorie’s confusion.
“I didn’t mean that I was going to do the talking,” the latter hastened to explain. “I meant we’d all talk things over, instead of trying to organize. Queenie, will you tell me what made you think that you would like to form a Girl Scout troop?”
“Miss Winthrop, I guess,” replied the youthful leader. “She said if we wanted a club here any more, we’d have to have a leader, and we all liked your looks, so we asked for you. And then she told us how you were a Girl Scout, and we thought we’d like to try that.”
“But some of us,” put in Annie Marshall, the tallest and oldest girl in the group, “thought we was too old—that it was only something fer kids. I’m goin’ on seventeen myself.”
“Gracious!” laughed Marjorie, “we had lots of active scouts in our troop who were eighteen, and we older ones do scout work yet, as a senior patrol. There are plenty of things in it for older girls.”
“We like the uniform,” continued Queenie, “and we’re crazy about goin’ camping sometime. And that’s about all there is to it, isn’t it? Except of course meetin’ here once a week—and we could do as we please at our own meetin’s.”
“I’m sorry,” said Marjorie, kindly, but firmly, “but you couldn’t. Once you’re scouts, you have to follow the scout law, and do the scout work. And it is work, too, though it’s mighty interesting work. If you want to win the honors, the merit-badges and the medals, you have to go in for it hard. So it must be all or nothing.”