“Get the dictionary, somebody,” laughed Bess. “We’re going to ‘acquire a vocabulary,’ as our English teacher recommends, if we keep on.”
“Steady,” continued Jean, still thinking, and now clutching her hair in a pretense of great concentration. “Aha! How about Stealthy? The ‘Stealthy Prowlers’? That isn’t so bad, is it? If we want to see any of the wild things in the woods around the lake, or even on the beach of Lake Michigan, we’ll have to do some prowling.”
“I can’t say that I think it very pretty,” said Molly.
“It isn’t. I’m sorry that I got you girls into those initials.”
“It’s all the funnier, Jean,” said Frances.
“Why, I rather like it,” Leigh added. “‘Stealthy Prowlers’ has a touch of mystery, as my mother would say. Let’s be it, for a while anyhow, but we’ll never tell a soul, shall we?”
“After all the names that we’ve said yes or no to, just for the fun of it, nobody would believe that this was our real name anyhow. And aren’t witches a sort of prowlers? Why not prowlers with a good purpose as well as prowlers with bad ones?”
“Put down Stealthy Prowlers, Nan,” said Bess, “as our best suggestion yet, and let’s get to talking about our attic club room. But Jean, you and Nan have more opportunity to see Miss Haynes than the committee does. Please see her about the hikes. She might even know about Scout work and be willing to camp with us somewhere.”
“That’s a great suggestion, Bess!” Leigh exclaimed. “Mother never would let me go to a summer camp, but she might, near home, as it would be here.”
S. P. ideas were growing. Jean and Nan promised to see Miss Haynes on Monday; and then the planning was directed to immediate affairs with the arranging and furnishing of the club room, the time of meetings, whether they should have refreshments or not, and kindred matters to be decided. Jean was to be spared some things, for it would not be fair, the girls said, for her to be at all the trouble, or expense, if there were any, about the room. It was enough for her to offer the room. But Jean informed them that the furniture was there and the room doing no one any good. “Mother is having the attic all cleaned for us to-day,” she announced, “and this morning we decided that it was foolish to keep a lot of things that might do somebody some good. So you ought to see the clearance! But all the furniture that can be fixed for us, and some trunks of things that will be lovely for us to dress up in will still be there.”