"Then we'll come over to-morrow to see him. I think he's a nice dog because he looks just like Miss Prindle's General who has all kinds of prizes, only dirty!" Patricia motioned to Watkins who, resigned to waiting, had become more concerned in the afternoon newspaper than in the fate of the dog.
He looked a little angry now when Pat explained that they intended to carry the dog in the automobile to the Quinn home, but there was something in Pat's face that stilled the protest on his lips.
Pat exclaimed with delight when she found that Sheila lived in the old brick house whose windows were in sight of her own. With Renée and now Sheila, the world that had seemed only the day before to be so lonely, now seemed full of friends. Sheila did not tell Pat that she had often watched her come and go from the house that was so like a palace compared to her own. Sheila knew that there had been just a little envy in her heart at times and she was ashamed of it. For, after all, not for worlds would she exchange her dearest mother and the three small brothers for the wealth of the Everetts!
"Let's have lots of good times together," Pat called in parting, "and we'll come over first thing to-morrow to see the dog!"
So much had Pat and Renée to tell of their day that Mr. Everett quite forgot an after-dinner engagement he had made with a business acquaintance. All four of them, Aunt Pen and Daddy, Pat and Renée sat before the fire. Pat, with a diplomacy not suspected by her innocent family, led up very carefully to what she wanted "more than anything else in the world!" That was always the way she put it. She used the very words now as she told of Troop Six--the best in the whole city!
"Bless Pat!" cried her father, using Melodia's favorite expression, "I can't keep up with you! Yesterday it was one thing and to-day it's another, and it's always what you want more than anything else in the world!"
"Yes, Daddy--this is!"
"A Girl Scout----" he glanced over the children's heads at Penelope and his brows lifted as much as to say, "Well, this is your garden--what have you to say?"
Aunt Pen answered his look.
"Do you know, Thomas, I think it's just the thing! It will bring the girls in touch with joys and responsibilities they've not known before!"