“She’s plucky for a girl kid,” Bump volunteered.
“She’s plucky for anybody, boy or man. It’s no sociable experience to be lost overnight in these woods, I bet.” Mumps looked gloomily into the dark depths in front of them.
Some laughed, and the reaction from the long strain brought relief; but Billy interrupted it.
“Fellows, our scout has been different from the plan, but we have found what we came after, the flag and—the good deed.”
“Oh, is that a flag? Where’s the red, white, and blue? I was cold and I wore it.” The child reached up where it hung and traced the design with her finger, the while rubbing one brier-scratched leg with her calloused little bare foot.
Billy explained the flag to her, and then to the others said, “We must start if we are to reach home to-night. There’s no time for Sunday exercises, but what do you say to a song?”
“All right! Good enough!” they shouted.
“What shall it be?”
They answered one thing and another, but the girl piped, “‘My Country, ’tis of Thee’; I can sing that.”
So there in the woods they sang the hymn, not so inappropriate as it might seem, since a country is its people, and these young citizens had performed a noble service. There was a note of thanksgiving in the voices swelling there in the forest stillness, the child’s thin treble standing out clear from the rest.