But they were too care-free to even anticipate what the camp prospect might hold for them.
Not all the adventures of the woods are limited to “woozy bears and hooty owls.”
Which recalls something of their experiences as told in the other volumes of this series. It was in “The Girl Scout Pioneers, or Winning The First B. C.” that this same group of girls went through some interesting Scouting in a Pennsylvania mill town. Two foreign girls, Dagmar and Tessie, “wandered far afield” but were finally brought under the influence of the Scout movement through a most dramatic climax. The second volume, “The Girl Scouts at Bellaire,” is the story of the lost orchid. The precious bulb was brought from Central America but lost en route, and when Maid Mary, the queer little flower girl, was eventually won over to trust the Scouts, they came upon the priceless orchid as it struggled to grow through the arm of a saw-dust doll.
“The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest” has a very queer girl, Kitty Scuttle, for its heroine. This girl lives on a mysterious island upon which no one is allowed to land. But the Girl Scouts find a way, and when they do so they also find out how to rescue Kitty and the millionaire child, Royal. This little Peter Panish boy has been hidden on Looney Island by an unscrupulous nurse.
So it happens that the summer opening and for which the girls are planning must indeed be a time replete with adventure, if the reputation of this group of Girl Scouts is to be maintained.
[CHAPTER II—PETE’S PROLOGUE]
Into Lake Hocomo a setting sun was emptying its paint pots of every color left over from the day’s journey around the world, or the world’s journey around the sun; spilling out into the safe waters its blazing hues and sending streams of colored fires adrift into the lake’s helpless basin, in the final hour’s work of a day full of worlds and worlds of heat and color.
Along the banks of the lake and from many favorably situated cottages, an admiring audience was wont to view “the wonderful sunset,” although the season furnished the same sort of spectacle from March to October, varied only in degrees of beauty and more beauty.
The Girl Scouts, they who were already planning a real camp for the summer, were among those seated out on the landing, a pier that extended far enough into the water to give depth for the “steamers” that carried passengers up and down the eight mile stretch of water.
These girls looked at the sunset and made remarks somewhat intelligent, but being just normal girls they could hardly have been expected to “take a fit” over it, as some others were accused of doing.