As is told at length in the book preceding this one, how the village scouts hailed the invitation to attend council, and how the three city girls arrived in time to not only receive a warm welcome at Green Hill Farm, but also to visit the woodland camp the same afternoon, we will not repeat the narrative here.
But one thing the girls of Patrol Number Two decided to do after they had witnessed the scouts of Patrol Number One go through their “setting up exercises,” demonstrate for the benefit of the visitors how they could make wildwood beds, cook without metal pots or pans, make fire with two sticks, and read the secret signs of the woods in stones, twigs, grass and trees, and that was that no time was to be lost if the new scouts wished to catch up with their more experienced scout-sisters.
Rachel had had ample time that afternoon to prepare a tempting supper for the village girls, and when Mrs. James found the table had been set out on the side-porch she smiled with appreciation. During the supper the enthusiastic scouts talked of nothing else but the valuable knowledge Patrol Number One had acquired.
“It means, girls, that we each must devote plenty of our spare time to the studying of our handbook, ‘Scouting for Girls,’ for there we shall find just what Miss Mason’s scouts found,” said Mrs. James.
CHAPTER V
THE POULTRY GO ON STRIKE
The five girls of Green Hill walked along the country road a ways with the girls from the village, and then returned to the farm. As they turned in at the gate opening to the side-path leading to the porch, they distinctly heard the pigs squealing as if they were being tortured. They found Rachel in a piazza rocker, swaying back and forth furiously while she strained her eyes in the semi-darkness for a sight of the delinquent stock-scout. The moment she heard the group of girls as they approached the house, she shouted angrily:
“Is dat Janet wid you-all?”
Being assured that Janet was one of the party, Rachel continued: “How kin you go off sky-larkin’ likes-how-you-do, Janet, aknowin’ dem pigs is starvin’? I tells you it is such cruelty to anermals as I never seed!”
“I’m awfully sorry, Rachel, but I had intended going to feed them when Jimmy said she thought it would please our visitors if we accompanied them a short distance along the road,” said Janet, apologetically.
Rachel dared not criticise Mrs. James’s motives or advise, so she jumped up from the rocker and snapped shortly: “Come and fetch dis mush out to dem at onct!”