"Dear me!" said Rosanna. "What do you mean, Mabel? Is your mother going to let you do newspaper reporting?"
"She is perfectly willing for me to do whatever I feel I ought to do," said Mabel loftily. "Mother and I have had a good talk, and I find she is a great deal broader than I feared she would be. The fact is I have left home and have started on a career. I have a charming little box of a place where you must look me up."
"Splendid!" said Claire, clapping her gloved hands lightly. "I shall tell my father, and see what he says. I am always begging him to let me go away and live my life as I want to live it."
"But, Mabel!" gasped Rosanna in horror. "You can't do anything like that. You are only a little girl! You can't go off and live by yourself. Why, you just can't! And, besides, you know the loyalty and service a Girl Scout owes to her mother. I don't see how you can think of such a thing. I am sure you must be joking."
Mabel's face flushed deeply. "You don't understand at all, Rosanna," she said stiffly. "What might be right for one is not right for another. You know the Captain herself told me to live for myself alone and see how it would work out, and it is working out wonderfully. I shall report Saturday night at the meeting that it is a great success."
"Oh, dear, dear!" cried Rosanna. "I know she did not mean to have anything like this happen. Oh, Mabel, you must go back home!"
"I think she is right," said Claire.
"Certainly I am right," Mabel declared. "My apartment is around the next corner, Claire, number 112, if you will drop me there."
The girls were quite silent as Mabel indicated the apartment house and said good-bye, asking them both to come to see her. As they drove off, Claire was smiling and Rosanna was very grave.
"I wonder how she will come out," said Claire, as they turned toward Rosanna's house.