“The sooner Nora gets acquainted the happier she will be.”
Meanwhile the girls of Chickadee Patrol had all but forgotten about the stranger. They were after specimens and had discovered more than one new bird’s nest. Cameras were clicking, notes being taken, and so many interesting matters were being attended to, it was not strange that the sight of one little girl in a pretty blue frock, with a disdainful expression on her otherwise attractive face, might have been forgotten for the time.
If there were really fairies in those woods they should have intervened just then, for it would have been so much easier for Nora to have met the Scouts as companions, whereas she, holding away from the very idea of organization, kept building up a dislike which threatened to cause her much unhappiness.
The woodlands were broad enough for both to roam, but it was inevitable that both should meet some day, and, under what circumstances?
[CHAPTER VI—A PRINCE IN HIDING]
When Nora wrote to Barbara she drew word pictures of the beauties at Woodland Wilds. She shed a tear of real joy when writing about Cousin Jerry and Captain, and when she fondly recited the virtues of Cousin Ted she felt she put more in that one word “Motherly” than could otherwise have been conveyed.
It was in the writing of that letter that she took account of her actual self, for in wording it she had naturally summed up.
“I am not just sure whether I entirely suit or not,” she told Barbara. “Sometimes I feel so different. Of course they all love me, even Vita the cook, and I love them fondly, but don’t you know, Babs, you always told me I saw ‘foohey’ and you would not explain what it was to be that way? But I guess I am, whatever it is, for a lot of alterations have already been ordered,” she wrote.
“My new outdoor clothes have arrived,” the letter ran, “they are of brown cloth” (she avoided the use of the word khaki) “and they will stand a lot of hard wear. Cousin Jerry says we get them that color and so we won’t scare the birds and other woodland creatures. They are supposed to think we are part of the landscape.”
Nora then told of the attic, and its chest of treasures, and added she expected to try on a couple of outfits the very first day she was free from accompanying the surveying party.