“Want to save Don at my expense? All right, Tory,” he answered quizzically in the voice and manner Tory never really understood.
Lance moved forward and now stood close beside Miss Mason.
His golden-brown eyes and his sensitive mouth relieved his face from plainness, although he was considered the least good looking member of his family.
At present he was smiling in a charming fashion.
“See here, Miss Mason,” he began speaking slowly, “I don’t suppose you can imagine what a difficult thing it is to have a brother who is always putting you in the wrong? Oh, not intentionally, but by everlastingly doing the right thing and then trying to take the blame for your mistakes!
“Don did not want us to come to your camp and make a scene. He is our Patrol leader and we should have done what he advised. Only we wouldn’t and didn’t! He came along at last more to keep the rest of us out of mischief than because he wanted to be in it.”
Lance drew his brows together so they became a fine line.
“Wonder if I’ve got to make a clean breast of the whole business? Don is everlastingly forcing me to play up to him when I would not otherwise. The suggestion that we hike over to the girls’ camp and see what was going on originated with me. Don and I had been telling Dorothy you would never get things in shape over here without help from us, or men in the village. Your Girl Scout Troop has been claiming that you could accomplish all the things we do and a few other things beside. We did not believe you and wished to see for ourselves. I was sorry and mad as Don when some of the fellows went too far. We had a call-down from our Captain and have been looking for a chance to apologize. Do try and forget it, won’t you? If your Girl Scouts will swoop down on us unexpectedly and be double the nuisance that we were, we are willing to call it square.”
Sheila Mason laughed. Margaret Hale, the Patrol leader and one of Victoria Drew’s intimate friends, who had joined the group during Lance’s speech, shook her head. She was a tall, serious looking girl with clear-cut features and a graceful manner.
“Lance, I don’t believe a Boy Scout Troop is supposed to employ a lawyer. You strike me as a special pleader. You had better go in for the law instead of music. We are not so cranky that we would have objected to an ordinary descent upon us, even with the idea of showing us what inferior creatures we are. But when it comes to trying to frighten us, and some of the more timid girls were frightened, you behaved as if you were wild Indians.”