We had dandy fun sitting around there talking. Girls are all right, only they’re kind of funny, they keep giggling all the time—giggling and fixing their hair. But anyway, they know how to do good turns. Most of them like algebra and they’re funny in other ways too. But gee whiz, everybody has something the matter with him. I know a girl who stuck a safety pin on a stump for a scout sign. But they’re strong on being kind and all that, I’ll say that much.
Those girls took us out across the lawn in back and when I pointed out the big poplar tree away up there on west ridge they said they’d like to be going with us. And Dora Dane Daring said she was glad her father owned that house, so she could help us to keep to our bee-line. They stood there at the fence waving to us until we got away over pretty near to Westcott’s Hill. One of them threw a kiss to us then. Girls always wait till you get far away before they do that so that you can’t be really sure whether they meant it that way or not.
But I was sure, all right.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE NEW SCOUT
Now comes the part of our bee-line hike that I like best because we had to go through woods and open country. Houses and villages are all right, but me for the open country. There wasn’t any one following us now, there were no buildings or anything like that ahead, and it seemed quiet and lonely. Up to that time our hike had been sort of like a circus, only more so. But pretty soon, oh, boy, it wasn’t much like a circus, because something pretty serious happened.