“It proves there are brownies!” Veve cried happily. “We’re to have our tree house!”
“If that brownie is so smart, why didn’t he just wave a wand and have the tree house built presto-chango?” Eileen asked, doubt entering her mind. “You know what I think? Someone is playing a joke on us!”
“Of course!” agreed Jane, seizing upon the explanation. “From that cliff above, our conversation easily could be heard. Every word of it!”
“Let’s find out,” proposed Connie. “May we go up there, Miss Gordon?”
The teacher hesitated and then nodded consent. “Yes, I think we should investigate,” she said. “I’m curious myself to learn who tossed that stone. I tend to share Jane’s belief that someone must be playing a joke on us.”
Losing not a moment, the Brownie Scouts started up the steep trail. In their haste they slipped and scuffed their shoes on the sharp stones. But at last they reached the summit.
“No one here!” Connie announced, glancing carefully about.
“Of course not!” exclaimed Sunny triumphantly. “That proves the message came from a genuine brownie!”
“Genuine, my eye!” Jane cut in. “Ask Miss Gordon if fairies and brownies are real.”
“We all know they are merely story-book characters,” the Brownie Scout leader said. Then, seeing how crestfallen Sunny and Veve looked, she added kindly: