“That is excellent!” Miss Ladd exclaimed enthusiastically. “If you two scouts use your heads as cleverly as that all the time, you ought to get along fine in your work. But go on. What next would you do?”
“Go and find out where the people live. That needn’t be hard. Then we’d look over the lay of the land to see if there were a good place nearby for us to pitch our tents.”
“Yes,” put in Hazel; “and if we found a good place nearby, we’d begin the real work that we came here to do by going to the Graham house and asking who owns the land.”
“Fine again,” Miss Ladd said. “I couldn’t do better myself, maybe not as well. I did think of going with you on your first trip, but I guess I’ll leave it all to you. Let’s go back to the hotel now, and while you two scouts are gone scouting, the rest of us will find something to entertain us. Maybe we’ll take a motorboat ride.”
They started back at once and were soon at the hotel. Katherine and Hazel decided that they would not even look for the address of the Grahams in the directories at the hotel, but would go to a drug store on the main business street for this information.
The other girls waited on the hotel portico while they were away on this mission. They were gone about twenty minutes and returned with a supply of picture postcards to mail to their friends. On a piece of paper Katherine had written an address and she showed it to Miss Ladd. Here is what the latter read:
“Stony Point.”
“That’s about three miles up the lake,” Hazel said. “We thought we’d hire an automobile and go up there.”
“Do,” said Miss Ladd approvingly. “And we’ll take a motorboat and ride up that way too, if we can get one. Oh, I have the idea now. We’ll make it a double inspection, part by land and part from the lake. We’ll meet you at a landing at Stony Point, if there is one, and will bring you back in the boat. Now, you, Katherine and Hazel, wait here while I go and find a motorboatman and make arrangements with him.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Violet Munday.