Not only stock-raising and garden trucking progressed wonderfully for a few days, but the scouting also showed improvement in Patrol Number Two, after the acquisition of bees, goslings, pigeons, and lawn mower. When the scouts of Solomon’s Seal were not up at the house with their tenderfoot scouts, the members of the young patrol were over at the camp, engaged in scout pursuits.
Each scout had started a small garden patch for herself, accepting Natalie’s superior experience in such matters to win success and a badge as a garden scout. And then each scout decided to raise enough stock, besides the cow and bees they owned jointly, to enable them to take the test as farmer scout and win a badge for that, too. They were well along on the way to winning the badges for Dairy Scout and Bee Scout, by this time, and everyone seemed happy and eager to come out highest in the tests. All but Frances. She began to act discontented. Finally Mrs. James asked her if anything was wrong.
“Yes, lots of things are!” admitted Frances.
“Can’t you tell me what it is and maybe I can straighten matters out for you.”
“Well, I’m sorry I ever selected jitney driving for a profession, Jimmy. I see Natalie planting and harvesting the results of her garden—and we, too, enjoy the lettuce every day since it has been big enough to pull.”
Frances caught the glimmer of a smile at this remark, and questioned Mrs. James concerning her amusement. “I was thinking when you mentioned lettuce, Frances, that you can scarcely say we enjoy it so often as we have to eat it. Natalie planted so many seeds, besides the plants given her, that I fear we shall ‘go on’ as the brook in the poem ‘forever’—eating lettuce.”
“Well, it’s better to have too much of a good thing than not enough,” declared Frances, and Mrs. James agreed silently with that statement by nodding her head. “Then I see Janet’s kingdom doing so fine! the pigs expanding like a gas-filled balloon ever since Sue came to the farm. Susy growing stronger and more mischievous every day. The hens laying eggs as if for dear life. The chicks and goslings fast outgrowing their coops and associating with the older chickens when the corn is scattered in the yard. Even the pigeons are teaching their squabs how to fly, and Janet’s days are one long dream of success. But me—ah me!”
“What is wrong with you, Frances?” was Mrs. James’s astonished query.
“Even Norma! Look at quiet, poetical little Norma! She can offer us sweet posies, sniff at newly opened buds every morning, hoe, rake, and pat down the soil about the plants she has raised, and realize that she, as well as Natalie and Janet, is enjoying the fruits of her own labor. Then look at me!
“A conductor of a jitney! Not even my own motorman. I have to have Sam drive the car and he gets all the fun out of my life! No, I am going to strike and resign from business!”