Girl Scouts at Dandelion Camp

by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

This amused the scouts tremendously; they laughed and enjoyed the way the wise old animal balked about pulling them up the hills. But Mrs. Vernon had an idea.

“Girls, the next grade we come to, you three jump out and wait for Hepsy to start on her way, then instantly climb up on the tailboard and sit there. We’ll see if she minds the extra weight, or if she is just whimsical.”

So Hepsy halted as usual when she came to the next grade and the scouts did as the Captain suggested. They sat on the back of the buckboard floor, swinging their feet and laughing wildly at the way the horse jogged on up the hill, believing that they were walking.

Having reached the top, Hepsy waited, as was her custom, for the girls to climb in, but they merely crept over the back of the seat and then shouted: “Gid’dap!”

Perhaps it was this pulling and scrambling that moved the seat from the splintered groove, or perhaps it had not been securely slid into place when the two girls adjusted it. No one knew it had worked its way out of the slot and now was merely sitting on top of the side-rails; but the combined weight of the three girls held it firmly while the buckboard ran over level ground.

So elated were the scouts over the success of their hoax that they determined to repeat the trick at the next ascent. They sang and shouted with exuberant spirits, so that Mrs. Vernon had to hold her ears with both hands, while Betty drove.

But Hepsy became annoyed at such unseemly hilarity, and switched her tail impatiently several times. Still the scouts kept on laughing and shouting, so Hepsy expressed her irritation in starting to run.

The added speed only made the scouts laugh and shout louder, and Hepsy ran faster. As this was exactly what they all had wanted for an hour past, the girlish voices rang merrily over the hills and came back in mad echoes.

Now Hepsy determined she would not stand for such nonsense, but there was the steepest ascent of all just ahead. It was the last, but longest, on the mountainside.

Hepsy’s run turned into a gallop that rocked the vehicle from side to side, so that Betty could not control the animal. Mrs. Vernon hastily took the reins and tried to soothe the horse, but it seemed as if Hepsy said: “No, you laughed at the way I was fooled, so now I will have my turn!”