BLUE ROBIN, THE GIRL PIONEER
CHAPTER I—THE NEST IN THE OLD CEDAR
Nathalie came running up the steps of the veranda her brown eyes alight with excitement as she cried, “Oh, Mother, what do you think? Down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn is a nest of tiny blue robins—they’re just the cutest things—do come and see them!”
“Blue robins?” quizzed her brother Dick from where he lay reading in the hammock. “Who ever heard of blue robins?”
“I think she means bluebirds,” ventured Mrs. Page, looking up from the morning paper and smiling at the earnest young face of her daughter. Then her eyes dimmed, but she winked her lashes quickly as if to restrain a sudden rush of tears, rose in answer to the note of appeal in the girl’s voice, and stepped to her side.
A moment later they were strolling across the new-grown grass of the lawn, the girl of sixteen supporting the slender, black-gowned figure of her mother, whose delicate, high-bred face with its impress of recent sorrow defined the youthful glow of the one that smiled upon her so tenderly.
“Now, Mumsie, look!” whispered the girl as she pointed to a dark cavity in the trunk of the cedar but a short distance from the ground; “see, are they not robins?”
Mrs. Page’s tired eyes brightened as she watched with keen interest the five bobbing heads with open bills, turweeing in hungry clamor, “Why no, Nathalie,” she replied laughingly, “they are bluebirds.”
At this instant they spied the mother bird as she flitted excitedly among the upper branches of the tree. Drawing her mother to one side, Nathalie whispered tensely, “Oh, there’s the mother bird—she wants to feed them! Let’s see what she will do!” Nathalie’s eyes sparkled expectantly.
It was quite evident what Mrs. Bluebird was going to do, for she immediately jumped to the edge of the nest and dropped a fat, squirming worm into an open bill. As she poised over her nestlings she caught sight of the two figures under the tree. In another instant she had set up such a vigorous scolding that the interlopers were quite disturbed. Seeing, however, that they did not offer to molest her little ones, Mrs. Birdie finally subsided, cocked her head perkily on one side, and watched them with eyes that shone like two fireflies.
Father bird now came flying up with another good-sized wriggler in his beak, which mother bird, with an eye to business, hastily snatched and dropped into a wide-open bill.
“Why, Mother,” commented Nathalie, “do you see that the father bird is much the handsomer of the two, for he is of a deep blue color, while mother bird’s feathers are grayish-blue.”
Her mother nodded as she answered, “Yes, and his beautiful coat is in striking contrast to his throat and breast, which are reddish-brown.”
“And the white feathers below,” continued Nathalie, with keen eyes, “look like a white apron.”
“But come, dear,” interposed her mother, “we must go back, for I hear Dick whistling—he is getting impatient—I promised to get him a sofa pillow for the hammock.”
As they stepped on the veranda, Dick inquired, with sarcastic inflection, balancing himself on the edge of the hammock and pushing it to and fro with his crutch, “Well, how many blue robins did you find?”
“We found five tiny bluebirds,” responded his mother with unwonted animation as she seated herself in a low rocker, and then she continued in lower tone as her daughter disappeared in quest of the pillow, “Oh, Dick! I am so glad to see some color in Nathalie’s cheeks again, for she has been looking very wan and pale. The poor child has not only suffered the loss of her father, but she has had to give up so many things—the very things, too, that a girl of her age longs for so much!” Mrs. Page sighed drearily.
“Giving up college was the hardest,” added her son, his face expressing the sympathy he hardly knew how to voice; “but she’s a corker, for she has faced every disappointment like a little hero. I didn’t know she had so much pluck in her.”
“She takes after her father, he was always so cheerful about facing the inevitable—” His mother’s lips quivered; she paused as if to gain control of her voice and then resumed brokenly, “Oh, Dick, to think he has gone—it seems as if it could not be true—”
“True enough,” retorted Dick gruffly; and then he added, in a softer voice, “but after all, Mother, every one has to have trouble. We’re having ours just now—that’s all—and we’ve got to bear it. Things might have been worse, I suppose—we’ve got enough left to live on—oh, if it wasn’t for this confounded knee of mine—to be helpless when—”
“Hush, Dick, don’t say that,” cried his mother in a pained voice; “just have patience, and you will be all right; have patience with me, too, dear, because I am such a coward to allow myself to get so depressed.” She made a brave attempt at a smile. “It will be as you say, all right soon.”
Hearing Nathalie’s step, she hastily hid her tear-stained face behind the paper; then, as that young woman threw the sofa pillow at Dick’s head, she exclaimed, “I am so glad, Nathalie, to see you take an interest in the new home. I think it is a lovely—”
“Doll’s house!” interposed the girl laughingly. “But, O dear, I must be careful, for when I called it a doll’s house while Mrs. Morton was here she looked rather queer, and then I remembered that her house is not much bigger. But do you know, Mother,” she rattled on girlishly, “I think we are going to be quite comfy in this little home—after a time of course,” she hastened to add, “when we have become used to the change—and all—” she stopped abruptly, for she, too, was thinking of the dear father who had gone so suddenly—without even saying good-by, as she had so often wailed in the darkness of night—leaving Mother with only a meager income, and with poor Dick to take care of, and her and Dorothy, who didn’t know enough to earn a penny!
A sudden slam of the door was heard, a “How are you, Auntie?” in a sweet, assured voice, and then with smiling eyes a tall, graceful, young woman, with shiny, fluffy hair came forward and kissed her aunt caressingly.
“Oh, Lucille, what do you think?” broke from Nathalie impetuously; “I found a nest of tiny bluebirds down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn!”
“Um-m, well, you are always finding something to enthuse over,” remarked her cousin with careless indifference, “but I wish you would make that all-round maid of yours do my room, I want to write a letter.” There was spoiled impatience in the girl’s voice.
Mrs. Page looked up with a startled expression as she murmured apologetically, “Oh, I forgot, Lucille. I will do it—I thought—”
“No, no, Mother,” came from Nathalie hurriedly, as with heightened color and gentle insistence she forced her mother back to her seat. “I will do it.”
Nathalie disappeared within the door. She had smiled sweetly for her mother’s sake, but as she went up the stairs there was an upward lift to her chin that showed that she had a will and a temper of some weight. “Why is Lucille so mean,” she questioned mutinously, “as not to make her own bed when she knows that now we shall have to get along with only one maid? Mother is not going to wait on her!” Her eyes gleamed with angry decision, and then the curves of her mouth softened as she struggled silently with her jarring thoughts.
Yes,
Leaving their beautiful city home, giving up the many luxuries and the pleasures to which she had been accustomed, parting from her school friends, and coming to the unknown suburban town were bitter disappointments; the one that cut the deepest was giving up college, but the hardest to bear was Dick’s accident!
The next moment the girl was hard at work picking up Lucille’s disordered room, humming cheerily as she went about her task, for, after all, her cousin was independent—she paid her board—and now they would need every penny.
A resolute will and deft fingers can accomplish much in this workaday world, and so Nathalie soon finished her new job, as she called it, and sat on the veranda watching the robins as they hopped nimbly over the lawn, ducking their heads every minute or so to reappear with fat, dangling worms in their beaks.
Their cheerful twitter, the budding leaves on trees and bushes, and the many reminders of the revival of life under the warmth and glow of the spring sunshine thrilled her with exhilaration. Her depression vanished, she felt happy again, but vaguely perhaps, scarcely comprehending that the buoyancy of youth and the joy of life were compensations that dulled the harrowing edge of grief.
With a long breath, as if to capture as much as possible of the spring balminess, Nathalie turned to see her mother seated in the low chair, with her basket of mending, wearing the same dazed, worried look on her face that had haunted the girl ever since their sorrow. She became keenly aware that her tireless mother, who had always stood ready to do the thousand and one things that were constantly calling her, was failing. Something swelled up in her throat, she fought valiantly a moment, and then jumping up, she grabbed the half-darned sock from her mother’s hand, pitched it into the basket, picked it up and carried it over to her chair.
“Now, Mumsie,” she declared in answer to her mother’s startled look, “you are not to darn any more stockings; henceforth your humble servant is to be the champion mender.” Nathalie’s cheeks flushed, for as she raised her eyes she encountered those of a young girl about her own age who was just coming out of the adjoining house.
As her neighbor saw Nathalie, she smiled a cheery good-morning, showing a row of strong, white teeth, and then strode down the walk with the light step and easy swing of the athletic girl.
“Huh! what a queer rig,” commented Lucille, with a supercilious raising of her eyebrows, as she noted that the girl wore a short brown khaki skirt over bloomers, a middy with a Turkey red tie, and a broad-brimmed hat banded with red. “Is that the Salvation Army’s summer apparel?” Then seeing that the girl carried a strong staff in her hand, she added with a giggle, “Or perhaps she is some aspiring member of the militants.”
“Why, I think the uniform—for I presume it is that—” interposed Mrs. Page, “is very attractive, and most appropriate for a Girl Pioneer.”
“Why, Mother, how do you know she is a Girl Pioneer?” questioned Nathalie with mild amazement.
“Ah, I forgot to tell you that her mother, Mrs. Dame, called the day you were out walking. She told me that Helen, her only daughter, belongs to ‘The Girl Pioneers of America.’”
“The Girl Pioneers of America!” repeated her daughter; “why, I never heard of them. Is it a patriotic society?”
“In a way I presume it is,” returned her mother, “as it is an organization which trains girls to emulate the sterling qualities of the early pioneer women.”
“I wonder what they do, and if it is anything like the Boy Scouts!” continued Nathalie interestedly.
“I think from what Mrs. Dame told me that it must be a sister society to that organization, for its object is to awaken within the girls a desire for healthy, outdoor activities, as well as a broad and useful life along many lines. I am sure in these days, when girls are so shallow and artificial-looking, and have no higher thought than getting all the pleasure they can out of life, that it is something which is sadly needed.” Mrs. Page’s tones were expressive.
“Oh, Aunt Mary,” demurred Lucille, looking up with a frown from her novel, “one would think that you expected girls to dress and act like their grandmothers. I am sure one can be young but once, and if one doesn’t have a good time then, what’s the use of living? And for putting a little color on one’s face, why, the most fashionable people do it nowadays.”
Mrs. Page’s face flushed slightly, but she replied with quiet dignity, “I am surprised, Lucille, to hear you talk that way, brought up as you have been, too. It is true,” she continued, “that there is no harm in wanting a good time—as you call it—that is youth’s privilege, and no one wishes to turn youth into age, but back of it all there should be common sense and a desire for right living. As for putting artificial color on a face that should represent the freshness and the natural bloom of youth, why, to me it is demoralizing.”
Lucille frowned impatiently and resumed her reading.
“Mrs. Dame,” continued her aunt, turning towards Nathalie, “said her daughter Helen was coming in to call on you; she will probably give you all the information you want about the new organization. I hope you will like her, dear, for she seems a pleasant, well-bred girl and surely will prove companionable to you. We might as well, all of us, try to forget our city life with its past pleasures, and see if we cannot adapt ourselves to our surroundings.”
“Indeed I will try, Mumsie,” replied Nathalie with a slight catch in her voice, as her thoughts turned back to her chums in the city, and she wondered what they would think of her humble little home. “But really, Mother,” she spoke aloud, “I think Miss Dame has an awfully bright face, and I wish she would call, for I should like to know about the Girl Pioneers.”
A few days after the finding of the bluebird’s nest, Nathalie, enlivened by the desire to investigate her surroundings, and curious for new experiences, set forth on a little exploring tour to the woods on the outskirts of the town. She had tried to induce her cousin to join her, but that young lady was absorbed in running over a new ragtime song. Her sister Dorothy, aged twelve, had also declined on the score that she had an engagement with a girl neighbor who lived in the big house down the road.
Sunshine and youth are joy-bearers, and as Nathalie felt the air in fragrant little whiffs against her cheeks, she thrilled with pleasure as she strode briskly up the hill. A moment later, however, her shining eyes shadowed, and she unconsciously shivered as she encountered a cold glance from a lady, weirdly garbed in gray, who was just passing.
The color flashed to her cheeks; she felt as if some one had slapped her as the haunting vision of that uncanny stare of aversion from two steely-gray eyes penetrated her consciousness. Tempted by curiosity she turned and watched the peculiar-looking figure as it glided with almost specter-like swiftness down the hill.
“I wonder who she is and why she gave me such a harrowing glance,” thought Nathalie. “Whew! she has frozen me stiff,” and then a laugh brightened
“Oh, I wonder if that lady didn’t drop it, she had a book under her arm,” flashed into the girl’s mind. She hesitated—she did not want to climb that long hill again—but the next second she had whirled about and was running lightly down the slope in the direction of a Carnegie building that glimmered picturesquely between green-boughed trees.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” panted Nathalie as she held out the card to the gray lady who had just emerged from the library and was looking vexedly about on the walk in front of the building, “did you not lose your library card?”
The lady turned sharply, stared suspiciously at the girl a moment, and then, as her eyes fell upon the extended card, exclaimed coldly, “Oh, did you find it? Thank you, I am much obliged!” With a haughty glance of dismissal she turned and ascended the library steps.
Nathalie’s eyes gleamed angrily, but with a toss of her head she was off on her second trudge up the slope. “Well, she is the limit—” she muttered. “Of all hateful, disagreeable, peculiar, mysterious creatures, she takes first rank.” But when the girl reached the woods where the new-gowned trees and the white blossoms of the dogwood, which she had spied the day before, riding in a trolley car, rustled softly in the sunlight, as if in a spring greeting to the flower-seeker, the unpleasant incident was forgotten.
With eager eyes and cheeks aglow she began to break off a sprig here and there, lingering only to caress the snowy petals that tantalizingly brushed her cheek.
“What a beauty!” she exclaimed as she suddenly halted; “it will be just the spray to sketch.” Up went her arm—a little higher—and then something went from under her; she tried to regain her footing, but slipped again on the moist turf. She felt her foot turn, and then came a sharp twinge that whitened her lips as she dropped, a helpless heap, on the ground.
For a few moments the girl forgot her dogwood blossoms, the slip, and the pain, and then she opened her eyes to realize, with a pang of dismay, that she must have fainted. Oh, she must have twisted her ankle, for when she tried to stand she almost screamed with the knife-like twinges.
She leaned her head against the tree with closed eyes, trying to think, but her thoughts seemed to run around in a circle, for she could see no way out of her dilemma. She was too far from the trolley line to hail a car, or to beckon to any passer-by who might be on the road.
She thought ruefully of how worried her mother would be if she did not return before dark. And who was there to look for her? Dick was helpless with his crutch, Dorothy would not be home until late, and Lucille—well, whoever heard of Lucille ever doing anything for any one but herself?
She screamed, but when her voice rang out with reverberating shrillness she clapped her hands to her ears. She would sing; and her fresh young voice broke forth into ragtime song.
But the ragtime quivered pathetically into a half-wail. What should she do? At last in sheer desperation she began to sing hymns; but they sounded so doleful in her nervous state that she desisted with a sound that was half a sob and half a laugh. She was about to embrace resignation to fate when she caught the glimmer of a brown skirt between the low-hung branches of the trees near by. In a moment there was a sharp crack of a twig, and Nathalie with a sudden exclamation of joy saw a young girl coming quickly toward her, wearing the same kind of a brown uniform she had perceived on her neighbor a few days ago.
“Oh, are you hurt?” asked the girl quickly, as she saw Nathalie’s white face resting against the tree.
Nathalie, attempting to smile, told of her mishap, and then with widening eyes saw the girl run a few steps into the open. Then the short, staccato whistle of Bob White struck the air.
It was hardly a moment when, in response to this bird-call, several girls appeared in the opening beyond. A few hurried words with the girl who had signaled them, and they were around Nathalie, listening to the story of her accident.
After expressing their sympathy, two of the taller girls quickly slipped off their khaki skirts, unbuttoned them, and then, to the injured one’s amazement, one of the girls pushed her staff through the belt of one skirt and hem of the other, while her companion did the same with her staff. They were improvising a stretcher, as neat and comfortable-looking as if it had just been removed from an ambulance.
While the stretcher was being made, one of the girls had taken from her knapsack a small black case from which she extracted a bottle. Hastily kneeling on the ground, after Nathalie’s boot had been removed by her assistant, she bathed the injured foot, then, as her companion handed her a roll of white lint she bound it with a cotton compress, while Nathalie, with much curiosity, watched her as she quickly and skillfully performed the work of First Aid to the Injured. As she rose to her feet and turned to direct her companions in the lifting of her patient on the stretcher, Nathalie recognized her next-door neighbor, Helen Dame, the Girl Pioneer!
CHAPTER II—HER NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR
If Nathalie was surprised at the deftness and resourcefulness of these Girl Pioneers, she was amazed at the ease and comfort she experienced as the four girls strode forward, two at the head and two at the foot of the improvised stretcher.
Notwithstanding the sharp twinges in her foot, she felt as if she could have dropped into a doze if a sudden, jarring thought had not caused her to raise her head in search of her next-door neighbor. By the decision of her voice and her methodical manner of directing her companions as they prepared the “bed of ease,” Nathalie had recognized this girl as the leader.
But Helen Dame was not to be seen. One of the girls, however, on seeing Nathalie’s movement, commanded a halt and hastened to her side. “What can I do for you?” she inquired in an anxious tone. “Are you in pain?”
Her ready sympathy brought the tears to Nathalie’s eyes, for her nerves were somewhat under a strain, but she fought them bravely back, and looking up with a reassuring smile replied, “Oh no, I am all right, but I was looking for Miss Dame. I am afraid if Mother sees me on a stretcher, she will think something very dreadful has happened.”
“Ah, Helen thought of that,” was the quick reply, “and she has gone ahead to tell your mother that you have only hurt your foot, and to see if she can get Dr. Morrow to come over and look at it.”
“Oh, how kind of her—and of you all—” there was a slight tremor in Nathalie’s voice. “I am sure I do not know what would have become of me, alone there in the woods, if you girls had not come to my rescue.”
As the girls walked slowly on with their burden, the one walking by the side of the stretcher told Nathalie that they were a group of Girl Pioneers, that they had been on a hike, and that her name was Grace Tyson. As they chatted pleasantly, Nathalie told of her recent removal from the city to Westport. With wise forethought she suppressed all mention of her former wealth and the many luxuries she had been used to, for fear that these suburban girls, not comprehending, might misjudge her and think that she considered herself above
In the companionship of this new girl she scarcely realized how quickly the time had passed until she saw her mother’s anxious face bending over her, and heard a masculine voice say, “Well, is this the young lady who reached too high?”
Nathalie looked quickly up and immediately her heart went out to this big, bluff man with iron-gray hair and kindly blue eyes who picked her up as if she had been a manikin, carried her into the hall, and laid her on the couch. She recognized the face of the doctor who lived on the opposite corner whom she had often envied as he went chugging down the street in his automobile.
After the doctor had pressed her foot here and there with a touch as soft as silk from the gentleness of trained fingers, he brought forth some surgical plaster from a black case, and strapped the injured member, remarking as he did so on the surgeon-like way in which Miss Dame had bandaged it.
After the “exam,” as Dick called it, was over, the doctor explained the case as a few strained ligaments, and said that with care his patient would be able to walk in about a week.
“A week?” sprang from the young girl involuntarily. Dismay shone in her eyes, but the doctor, with a fatherly pat, assured her that she had great cause for gratitude, as it might have been much worse.
“The next time you go to gather dogwood blossoms, young lady,” he advised jovially, “wear rubber heels, and then you won’t slip on stones.”
As the doctor bade her good afternoon, promising to come again in a few days to see how the foot was progressing, Nathalie thought of her rescuers, and raising her head peered anxiously around.
“The girls have gone, but they left a good-by for you,” her mother answered to her look of inquiry, “and Miss Dame says she will be in to-morrow to see how you are.”
By to-morrow Nathalie had begun to think it was not at all unpleasant to be a short-time invalid, and she jokingly requested her mother to see that her head was not screwed around from sheer conceit at being the recipient of so much attention.
Mrs. Morrow, the doctor’s young wife, had sent her a beautiful bunch of yellow daffodils from the very garden that Nathalie had been admiring all the week, while the little, silver-haired old lady next door—Nathalie could have hugged her, she looked so grand-motherly—had sent her a snow-frosted nut-cake. Lucille—an unheard-of thing—had condescended to alight from her pedestal of self and had played and sung Nathalie’s favorite selections all the morning. Even Dorothy, whose engagement book was always brimming over, had darned stockings for her. Of course, Nathalie knew that she would have to rip out every stitch, but that was the child’s way of showing that she, too, wanted to be sympathetic and kind.
The success of the day, however, was when Helen Dame’s dark eyes smiled at her from the adjoining porch, and she asked if Nathalie felt like chatting for a while.
“Indeed I do,” answered Nathalie animatedly, “I have been just dying to talk with you ever since you were so kind.”
“Oh, how sweet you look!” exclaimed Helen a few moments later as she shook hands with the patient, “with your pink ribbons—just the color of your cheeks.” For the girl’s color had deepened as her visitor laid a bunch of violets on her lap. “These are from the girls, the Girl Pioneers—that is our Pioneer song,” she added laughingly.
“I just love violets!” Nathalie sniffed at the purple petals. “And the girls, do you mean the ones who so kindly came to my aid the other day? Oh, Miss Dame, I hardly know how to express my appreciation of your kindness,” her voice trembled slightly, “in hurrying home to tell Mother.”
“Oh, that was nothing,” replied Helen with assumed indifference, although her eyes darkened in appreciation of Nathalie’s gratefulness, “that was only courtesy; you know we are Girl Pioneers, and kindness is one of the laws of the organization.”
“Do you know,” Nathalie broke in impulsively, “Mother thinks the girls very clever in making that stretcher; do tell me about the Girl Pioneers!” She hesitated for a moment. “Perhaps I am very ignorant, but I never heard of them until your mother told mine that you were a Girl Pioneer.”
Helen laughed with a gratified gleam in her eyes. “Oh, Mother!—she thinks it just the dandiest thing going. Mrs. Morrow, our Director, introduced the movement here. The founder is a friend of hers, so she is steeped to her finger-tips with it.
“She started me going—enthusiasm is contagious, you know—and I organized the first group. A group means six or eight girls; several groups form what is called a band.”
“Do you mean Mrs. Morrow, the doctor’s wife?” inquired her companion. “She must be lovely, for she looks so pretty flitting about the garden,” turning wistful eyes toward the corner house with its flower beds and green lawn. “I often watch her from my window.”
“Yes, she is a dear,” assented Helen, “and we girls adore her. Have you seen the twins?”
“The kiddies who go about in khaki uniforms and carry little poles.”
“Yes, baby Boy Scouts. You should hear them call themselves ‘the twims’; they both lisp. But there, I must tell you about the Pioneers—but I don’t want to tire you,” she paused abruptly, “for Mother says there is no end to me when I get talking on that subject.”
“But I want to hear about them!” pleaded Nathalie.
“Well, after I organized the group, the girls elected me leader, and Grace Tyson—that’s the girl who walked beside you coming home—my assistant. You see every group has to have a leader and an assistant from the group, and then when a band is formed there is a Director. Any one over twenty-one years of age can be a Director. After we formed our group, we had to get busy and qualify.”
“Qualify?” repeated her hostess, “that sounds big.”
“Yes, every Girl Pioneer has to qualify, that is to pass several tests to prove that she is competent to do the work. It is no end of fun training a girl to qualify, for you know she has to recite the Girl Pioneer pledge, and the Pioneer laws; she must give the names of the President and Vice-President of the United States, the name of the Governor of the State in which she lives, and then tell all about our country’s flag. She must know how to sew a button on properly,” Helen made a grimace, “to tie a square knot and to do several other things. After a girl has passed these tests, she becomes a third-class Pioneer; then after a month she can qualify for a second-class Pioneer, and finally for a first-class Pioneer. We can win merit badges, too, for proficiency in certain lines. Yes, you are right, it is a big thing to be a Girl Pioneer, for every true Pioneer’s aim is to be courageous, resourceful, and upright, under all circumstances and in all emergencies.
“You know, we have to pledge ourselves to speak the truth at all times, to be honest in all things, and to obey the Pioneer law.” Helen’s face grew serious. “Yes, and our laws mean something, too, for they stand for the doing of things that are worth while, the things that develop nobility of character, for, as Mrs. Morrow tells us, it is character that makes the
“But don’t think we are serious all the time,” she continued, her eyes brightening, “for we have heaps of fun. We take hikes; sometimes just a group go with their leader, but generally our Director takes the band. On these hikes we study woodcraft; that means we study the birds, their habits, and learn to know their songs and call-notes. We gather wild flowers, ferns, and grasses, and each girl reads up about the particular thing she finds and passes the information along. We study the trees, and the animals also by tracking their footmarks—well, to sum it all up, we study nature from growing things and living creatures.
“To read about things in a book is all right, Mrs. Morrow says, as it is helpful in identification and suggestion, but we strive to know things through personal experience. We are taught to find nature, too, in the crowded cities. That’s big, isn’t it?”
“Big!” echoed Nathalie, “the word big isn’t big enough to express it. I should say it meant—well”—she held out her arms, “the universe.”
There was something so responsive in her words and attitude, although they did not exactly express what she meant to convey, that Helen, with almost boyish frankness, held out her hand, crying, “Good! let’s shake. You are simply immense, Miss Page, or, in the words of our old French professor at school, ‘you—haf—much com—pree—henshun!’” This was said in mimic tone with laughing eyes, a shrug of the shoulders, and with outspread hands.
“We have indoor rallies, or Pioneer circles, also, Miss Page, when our Director gives us delightful little talks on ethical culture,—only ten minutes—” she pleaded laughingly, “also on history, astronomy,—we call them our star talks,—and other instructive subjects.
“You will be surprised, perhaps, but these talks are very interesting, not at all tiresome. The girls listen with all their ears and we learn an awful lot. One reason is that Mrs. Morrow loves young girls—for you see, she isn’t so very much older than we are—and she knows just how to talk to us, so that we don’t feel as if we were being preached at, or having wisdom jammed down our throats. It is just dramatizing serious things through play, so as to make us remember them as well as entertaining us. Then we have spelling-contests, cooking-matches,—I call them trials by fire,—sewing-bees, and all sorts of old-fashioned things.”
“But you have outdoor sports, too, do you not?” asked her listener, who was intensely interested.
“Indeed we do, any number of them: swimming, horseback-riding, rowing, canoeing, basket-ball, tennis, dancing, stilt-walking,—we make our own stilts,—kite-flying,—and we make our own kites, too. In fact, we do just about everything that stands for healthful recreation and wholesome fun. Isn’t that comprehensive enough?”
“How did you come to take the name ‘Pioneer’?”
“Well, you see it was this way; as the Boy Scouts strive to imitate the chivalry and higher qualities of the knights of olden times, so we, their sister organization, endeavor to emulate the sterling qualities of the early pioneer women. They learned to be courageous, resourceful, and efficient, as the home-makers of the brave men who founded this Republic—”
“Do you mean the wives of the Puritans and Pilgrims?”
“Yes, we mean all those women, North, East, South, and West,” Helen declared smilingly, “who helped their good men to build homes in the wilderness, who mothered their children with Spartan-like denial, and who—yes, who knew how to handle an old flintlock when they heard the cry of the Indian. Oh, no, I’m not originating, I am only an echo of Mrs. Morrow, who is way up on Colonial history.
“The Pioneer Girls,” she continued more seriously, “aim, by imitating the many qualities of these splendid women, to be worthy wives and mothers. Who knows?” she broke into a laugh, “the Girl Pioneers may be the mothers of men like Washington, Lincoln—O dear,” she stopped suddenly, “I am talking as if I had to speed a thousand words a minute!”
“Oh, go on!” cried Nathalie, inspired by her guest’s fervency, “I just love to hear you talk.”
“It is very good of you to say that,” declared Helen with a slight blush, “but I am almost ‘at the finish,’ as the boys say. But I must not forget to tell you that we love to gather around the open fire, cheer fires we call them, and tell stories. We generally try to make them stories about the pioneers, or heroic women, and sometimes we run in a story about some brave kiddie, for you know almost every one loves to hear about brave little children. Ah, that reminds me, did you ever hear about Mary Chilton? She was a real pioneer girl you know, for she came over with the Pilgrims.” Helen nodded her head impressively.
“No, I have read about Lola Standish, and I believe—yes—I saw her sampler once, and I am quite up on all the points of Priscilla’s courtship, but—”
“Who isn’t?” replied Miss Dame, “for she was a dear. Mary Chilton was a friend of hers. Why, don’t you remember she was the girl who made the bet with John Alden—slow old John—that when the little shallop struck Plymouth Rock (of course they never dreamed that they were going to make that old rock immortal) that she would jump on the rock first; and sure enough she did manage to land a second or so before John Alden.”
“Well, the Girl Pioneers aim high,” declared Nathalie, “and I certainly think they must be worthwhile girls. I shall love to meet your Pioneer friends—they cheered me up—” she added, “for they made me think of the girls at school, especially Grace Tyson. Why, she is so much like my chum that it almost seemed as if I were talking to her the other day! Your friends all have such happy faces, and ‘it is such a relief to see good red cheeks as made by Mother Nature,’ as Mother says. Some of the girls one sees in the cities nowadays have such a made-up appearance, especially those on the avenue Saturday afternoons in New York.”
“Yes, they have regular clown faces with their splashes of red, and their powdered noses,” returned her neighbor laughingly. “I always feel as if I wanted to tell them they had forgotten to rub the flour off. It doesn’t seem possible that any well-bred girl could think she looks nice all dabbed up in that way. But there, I am tiring you,” she added hastily, “so I am going to say good-by. Oh, I came very near forgetting to ask if you would like to have the girls call on you—I mean the girls of our group?” she hesitated. “I think you would like them, although they may not be as fashionable as your city friends.”
“Oh, but they are the kind of girls I like,” protested Nathalie hurriedly, “for I do not care for girls who are nothing but fuss and feathers. Please do bring your friends, for I know I shall like them, and then, too, they may tell me more about the good times you have.”
“Indeed they will,” said Helen with decision; “they will be only too pleased. When shall we come, will Thursday be a good day for you?”
“Yes, indeed; I shall be here—still in this old chair I presume; I shall watch for them with great impatience, for you know,” she added a little sadly, “they remind me of my schoolmates in the city. Oh, I have missed them dreadfully! Now, be sure to come—all of you!”
She rose in her chair to wave a good-by to her new friend, who, as she reached the gate, had turned and waved her hand.
Nathalie sank back in her chair with tear-dimmed eyes, for somehow that friendly salute had brought it all back—the