“I don’t s’pose there is anything more I can do to-day to hurry them along, is there?” Natalie wondered aloud, as they finished breakfast and were discussing the wonders of a vegetable garden.
Mrs. James laughed. “No, I should advise you to start out as Janet and you planned, to interest girls in a Scout Patrol to-day. By permitting the vegetables to grow unwatched, they will surprise you the more. Perhaps the corn found courage to come out of the ground when it heard you were not around to annoy it. Had we been about the place yesterday, instead of at camp, the corn may never have dared come out of hiding.”
Natalie glanced at the speaker to see if she was in earnest, but Janet laughed merrily at the words.
“Well,” ventured Natalie, “as we ought really to find enough girls to fill our quota for a Patrol, I think we will visit some of the families to-day, and then attend to our farm work later.”
“How shall we manage to get around to the different houses, Nat, if they are so far apart?” asked Janet.
“I’m going to sit on the steps and watch for Mr. Ames to go by. When he comes in sight I shall ask him to drive us to the Corners. He will stop at Tompkins’ for an hour, most likely, and by that time we can be ready to come back. I want to call on Nancy Sherman and Hester Tompkins. They are both about our age. On our way back from the store, we will ask Mr. Ames to tell us when he can drive us to his brother’s farm to buy the pig. He may say we can go this afternoon, and if he does, we’ll go!”
“We’ll buy the pig, all right, but we’ll also get the Ames girl to say whether she wants to be a Girl Scout with us,” laughed Janet, admiring Natalie’s clever plan.
“Janet,” remarked Mrs. James, “don’t you see a great improvement in Natalie’s ambitions? In the city she never gave a thought to planning anything. Now she is all plans for the future.”
“Yes, I see Nat blossoming out into a regular organizer,” laughed Janet. “If I don’t watch out she will usurp my throne. I was always the leader in the crowd of girls at school, but Nat is fast getting ahead of me.”
The very idea of Natalie advancing ahead of Janet made the girl laugh. But it pleased her, too, to hear her friends praise her. She knew, as well as anyone, that she was lazy and procrastinating in the city. But now she was eager to do things and to do them at once!