“I won’t agree about the last one,” objected her room-mate, her eyes filled with admiration. “You’re always doing marvellous things.”
“I’m afraid not, Lil!” An unsatisfied look crept over her face. At present Marjorie’s powers did not stand high in her own estimation.
“The trouble with me is, I can’t get my scouts’ point of view,” she remarked, harping back to the old subject. “I can’t seem to realize that they aren’t our dear old senior patrol, who got a thrill out of anything connected with scouting. In one way they know so much more than we ever did—they’re so experienced—but in another they’re ignorant and blind, and deaf besides. One thing I learned at the hike—they are bored to death with nature. I might just as well cross hiking and camping off of my program.”
“Until later, perhaps,” amended Lily. “But it all has to be very gradual. In the meantime, we’ve got to find something else to interest them, and keep tests in the back-ground. Then maybe when they get out with other scouts, they’ll catch the fever.” Marjorie’s eyes brightened; it meant so much to have some help in this weighty problem.
“Can you think of anything that they would be interested in?”
“How about basket-ball?”
“The very thing! That’s exciting enough. And if we played around, and visited other teams——”
“Let’s talk it over with Mr. Richards on Wednesday. Maybe he’ll have something even better to suggest.”
As the intervening days passed, Marjorie found herself banking more and more upon this interview. She even made little notes in her book, anxious not to forget anything, or to waste too much of the man’s valuable time.
Yet when the hour came, and she and Lily walked down to the reception-room, she was conscious of a strange little feeling of loneliness. This was John’s night, and she was not to see him, might even not see him on Saturday, and she missed him more than she had expected. Suddenly she wondered whether she were not being foolish to allow such an uncertain undertaking to usurp her time and monopolize her interest. Was she right in putting John aside for this new fancy, John, who had meant so much to her all the years of her school life?