“What can I do for you? Are you in pain?”

BLUE ROBIN,

THE GIRL PIONEER

BY

RENA I. HALSEY

ILLUSTRATED BY NANA FRENCH BICKFORD

BOSTON

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Published, March, 1917

Copyright, 1917

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

All rights reserved

BLUE ROBIN, THE GIRL PIONEER

Norwood Press

BERWICK & SMITH CO.

NORWOOD, MASS.

U. S. A.

BLUE ROBIN THE GIRL PIONEER

IS

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

TO

MISS LINA BEARD

FOUNDER

AND

CHIEF PIONEER

OF

THE NATIONAL INCORPORATED

ORGANIZATION OF

THE GIRL PIONEERS OF AMERICA

WHAT ARE “GIRL PIONEERS”?

The first public meeting of the National Organization of the Girl Pioneers of America was held by the founder, Miss Lina Beard, in the quaint old Pioneer meeting-house on Broadway, in Flushing, New York, February 8, 1912.

The aim of the Organization of Girl Pioneers is: To cultivate in girls the sterling qualities displayed by our early pioneer women; to create a desire in them for a happy, broad, and useful life and to show them how to attain it; to give them things to do that are interesting, wholesome, and that will strengthen character; and to develop a love for out-of-door life by showing them how to live it.

The watchword of the Girl Pioneer is, “I Can.”

The principles upon which the organization is founded are not simply taught as precepts, they are found and practiced in all the delightful activities of the movement. Outdoor life with its limitless avenues of interest: camping, trailing, woodcraft, learning to know the wild life of the open, its plants, its flowers, birds, common wild animals and insects; the stars and the meaning of the shadows, the use of nature’s material in handicraft; all these and many more are opened to the Girl Pioneer, and by actual contact she is finding the beauty of truth and the wonder of reality. By her membership in this large organization she is learning to be less self-centered, learning to work with others and for others, and to share her enjoyments with others. By the joyous participation in field-sports, and such recreation as rowing, swimming, fishing, riding, kite-flying, stilt-walking, and the more conventional games, such as basket-ball, service-ball, tennis, and archery, she is learning to play honestly and fairly, and is building up bodily health and strength to keep pace with the mental and moral health that is being developed within her.

By her indoor life, lived as truly in the pioneer spirit as her life in the open, she is bringing into play the faculties of resourcefulness, of adaptability, of thoroughness, and the virtue of helpful kindness. She learns to do all household tasks, to do them well, and to be interested in them. She is taught in charming ways the use of her five senses, and is delighted to find that she can develop them and consciously enjoy them. She learns to care for the sick and the young children; she is proud of being able to render “first aid” according to the latest and best methods; she learns how to avoid accidents as well as what to do in case of accidents. She has a system of signs for blazing the trail which belongs solely to the Girl Pioneers, and she learns what to do in case she is lost when camping or trailing. In short, the Girl Pioneer’s teaching makes her efficient in all fields. The mind and imagination of the Girl Pioneer are stimulated by true stories of heroism and the adventures of the early pioneers. Her merit badges are given the names of the women pioneers, including besides the early settlers those who were in helpful work for humanity. Her honors are shown by stars worn on the sleeve, which indicate the tests successfully passed and lead up to the final merit badge.

The Girl Pioneer colors, red, white, and blue, not only signify that the organization is national in extent but hold a still further meaning for the Girl Pioneers; red standing for courage, white for purity, and blue for truth. The graceful salute symbolizes a brave heart, an honest mind, a resourceful hand. The motto of the Girl Pioneer is, “Brave, Honest, Resourceful.”

The Girl Pioneers have their khaki uniform with red tie and red hatband, which is practical, adaptable, and pleasing. They have their banners, their Pioneer sign, their initiation, with its ceremony and membership certificate; their rallies, field-days, and other general meetings indoors and out. They have their Pioneer cheer, and each Band and each group has a cheer of its own. There is the official song which all the Pioneers sing, and there are songs composed by the Bands.

Each Band is under the leadership of a volunteer director who furnishes acceptable credentials. The Band is composed of one group, or several groups, of from six to ten girls in each. The name of an American wild bird is chosen for the name of each group, and the Band is known by its number. The bird cheers of the groups are very breezy and inspiring.

The Girl Pioneer ranks are open to all girls, and the work is very helpful in Sunday-schools, public schools, private schools, camps, and all large societies for girls, such as Young Women’s Christian Association, Young Women’s Christian Temperance Union, playgrounds, etc.

The Daughters of the American Revolution, Colonial Dames, and like organizations seek to preserve the historical records and objects connected with the early life of our country, while the Girl Pioneers seek to revive and perpetuate the spirit that dominated the invincible men and women who made our nation possible.

The Girl Pioneer organization is governed by an Executive Board, of which the Chief Pioneer, Lina Beard, is the head. There is also a National Council composed of eminent and influential men and women living in various parts of the United States, to be called upon when needed.

The Pioneer folder will be sent upon application, and the Manual will be sent upon receipt of price, thirty-five cents, and seven cents for postage. For further information and for literature, address:

FOREWORD

A few summers ago I had the pleasure of being entertained by several Bands of The Girl Pioneers of America, on the wooded shores of one of Long Island’s noted bays, at Camp Laff-a-Lot. As I watched these wholesome-looking, happy girls in their attractive uniforms, and saw their bright, animated faces as they made merry in joyous sport under God’s blue, and then turned to the more serious employment of making bayberry candles, building camp fires, gathering wildflowers in their study of Nature, or blazing the trail as they made the woodland resound to their wonderful imitation of bird-notes, in the various calls of their groups, my interest was awakened. Later, as I gathered with them in the red glow of their Cheer Fire and heard their rousing Pioneer cheer, and their inspiring Band songs, and saw how a love for history and the true meaning of patriotism was engendered, while their minds and imaginations were being stimulated by their stories of the heroism of the women Pioneers, I realized that as our patriotic organizations were seeking to honor the Founders of our Nation by preserving historical records and objects, these Pioneer daughters were seeking to revive and perpetuate the spirit that dominated the men and women who brought to these shores, the grand principles of a civilization that has made our Republic the greatest in the world! It was in recognition of the nobleness of the aims of The Girl Pioneers of America, as well as in appreciation of the worthy Founder’s efforts to bring out the best in them, that inspired me to set forth if only in a limited way these many truths, and so I was emboldened to write “Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer!”

Rena I. Halsey.

Brooklyn,

January 1, 1917.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

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, it must be borne, for was it not a part of the great change that had come into her life with her first great sorrow? The shock of her father’s death had dazed her, and she had suffered in a dulled, uncomprehending way until she was aroused from her grief by the many anxieties and disappointing changes that the financial tangle of her father’s affairs had caused.

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 the brown eyes as she continued on her way. She had almost reached the top of the hill when she saw a large brown card on the walk. Picking it up she read, “Westport Library,” and then the written name, “Elizabeth Van Vorst.” Not a great loss, to be sure, but likely to cause inconvenience.

“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 them. She had learned from the girls of her own set in school that when a newcomer took particular care to advise them how rich she was, her mates usually dubbed her a snob. So she only told of her great loss in the death of her father, how Dick, her older brother, had injured his knee in an accident and was an invalid, and how she liked her new home.

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 great men and women of the world.

“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 faces of her merry comrades, and the happy care-free hours they had spent together. She swallowed hard, for Helen had waved her hand just the way the girls used to do when they came in afternoons for a chatty little visit, and then hurried away with just such a parting salute.

CHAPTER III—GIRL PIONEERS

“Oh, I wish you would tell me something about your school life in New York,” begged Helen wistfully; “I had a friend who used to go to one of the high schools. I hear they are very fine.”

It was Thursday, the day the Girl Pioneers were to call on Nathalie, and Helen Dame had run over a few moments before their arrival to have a short chat with her new friend.

“Oh—I,” Nathalie hesitated with rising color, “I did not go to high school. Yes, I know they are very fine, but I attended a private school kept by Madame Chemidlin.”

An “oh!” escaped Helen involuntarily, as her eyes gloomed a little, but her companion plunged recklessly on.

“It is considered one of the finest schools in the city, because, well, for one thing, Madame is adorable, her father was one of the nobility, a political refugee from France, and then because the girls who attend come from the best families in New York. They were just dears—” with a sigh of regret—“Nellie Blinton, she was my chummiest chum, she’s the one I told you Miss Tyson reminded me of, she has the same kind of a face as Nell, with big, dark eyes and the same gentle, ladylike way about her that my friend has.

“Then there was Puss Davidson, she’s awfully clever. She writes stories, and last year won a gold medal from St. Nicholas. She was Valedictorian of our class last Spring. You know I graduated then, but took a post-graduate course last winter and expected to enter college this fall, but now, of course, things are different.” She spoke a little sadly.

Helen could not help feeling somewhat disappointed as she heard about these rich schoolmates of Nathalie’s; she had taken a great liking to this girl with the daintily colored face with its rounding curves, lighted by eyes that held you captive with their frank, direct gaze. Although bright and clever-looking, this Girl Pioneer possessed no claim to beauty, for, as she ruefully commented at times, she had a nose with a knob on it. For that reason, perhaps, being free from that enviousness that characterizes so many girls, she was a beauty-lover. Too often she had made friends with girls just because they appealed to her love for the beautiful, only to realize when it was too late that good looks do not always mean pleasing traits of character. In fact, Helen was somewhat tired of being disappointed, and had vowed to her mother that she was never again going to care for a pretty girl. She was not sure that Nathalie was a real beauty, but surely, with her lovely brown eyes and the gracious little way she had, not at all self-conscious, but just real “self,” she was in a fair way to become very popular with the girls.

Her eyes clouded momentarily and something caused an unpleasant jar. No, she was not jealous of Nathalie, for she was willing to have her know and be liked by the other girls, but as she had been the first one to know her, she wanted to be her special friend. But then if she had always had so many high-toned schoolmates, perhaps she would not care to be a friend to a girl who was learning to be a wage-earner. Helen had always felt proud to think that some day she could be ranked among that class of highly regarded women, but would Nathalie think as she did?

There was something so straightforward, however, so honest, about Nathalie as she went on and told of her studies, her friends, and a few of the incidents in her school life in the big city, that Helen forgot her fears, and was compelled to believe that she would be doing her an injustice in fearing that she would choose her companions for what they had and not for what they were.

“Oh, here they come!” cried Nathalie at this moment as she caught a glimpse of a group of girls in brown uniforms coming down the street. She half rose from her chair and with sparkling eyes watched them as they came, a dozen or more, perhaps, up the steps of the veranda. In another second her eyes grew big as she saw each girl’s hand placed quickly over her heart, then up to her forehead, and lastly held with open palm at a level with the right shoulder. It was the Girl Pioneers’ salute to their leader, for Helen with a sudden straightening of the shoulders had responded to the greeting with a similar movement.

Nathalie had already stepped forward, leaning on Dick’s crutch,—he had been relegated to the couch in the hall,—and was crying, as her color came and went in pink flushes, “Oh, I am so glad to see you!” extending her hand to the foremost girl, Grace Tyson. “I think it’s just lovely for you all to come to see me!” nodding towards the rest of the group, with eyes that attested the cordiality of her welcome. She stopped abruptly, for the girls had broken forth into

“Hear! hear! hear! Girl Pioneer!
Come, give a cheer, G-i-r-l Pi-o-neer!”

“And a cheer for our hostess!” added Grace Tyson, lifting up her hand as she faced her companions. Before Nathalie could catch her breath there came another ringing cheer as each girl with smiling eyes shouted,

“Hear! hear! a cheer for Nathalie dear!
Girl Pi-o-neer! Girl Pi-o-neer!”

If Nathalie’s color had been going and coming, it now flooded her face as she laughingly held out her hand to each one in turn, giving a soft little squeeze that made each girl vote her a comrade.

Grace and Helen now led Nathalie back to her chair, somewhat solicitous as to the sprained foot; but she laughingly assured them that she was all right. Then with animated eyes she bowed and smiled as Helen, who was spokesman for the group, began to introduce each one of the Pioneers in turn, in an offhand, half quizzing way that relieved the formality of the ceremony.

“This is Miss Jessie Ford, our literary scribe and Editor-in-chief of ‘The Pioneer,’ a penny newspaper issued monthly, devoted to the news and doings of the Girl Pioneers.”

Jessie, a wholesome-looking girl with golden hair worn in a coronet braid, and with bright, keen eyes, shook hands pleasantly, half smiling at the words of their leader. “Yes, she is clever, our Jess, and progressive, too,” went on Helen, her eyes twinkling, “which means a lot in these times.” There was the suspicion of laughter in her tone.

“That she’s progressive can’t be denied,” interposed Grace Tyson laughingly, “for when we had a Pioneer party a short time ago, Jess wasn’t going to be outdone by any newspaper reporter and wrote a detailed description of each girl’s costume and sent it to the ‘Town Journal.’ The paper appeared the afternoon of the ‘come-off,’ one of the girls saw the article, and suggested as a joke that we all change costumes. O dear, what a laugh we had on Jess!”

Miss Jessie, however, only smiled at all of this chaffing, as if proud of this proof of her alertness and stepped to one side.

“And this bluebird—oh, Miss Page did I tell you that each Pioneer group is named after a bird, and that ours is the Bluebird Group?” Helen had forgotten her teasing tone in her eagerness to impart this information.

“What a pretty idea,” responded Nathalie, “and bluebird, the name of your group!” thinking of the nest of bluebirds she had found down in the old cedar.

Helen nodded with pleasure and then said, “This is Miss Kitty Corwin; we call her our pot-boiler—that means that Kitty always manages to keep the pot boiling not only by holding up her end of the line, but all the other ends, too, when the derelict Girl Pioneers forget to do so.”

“And you might say she always carries all the pots and pans, too, when there’s a hike,” interposed the newcomer, with a nervous laugh. She was an awkward-looking girl about fourteen, all arms and elbows, but with a rather winsome face lighted by big, serious eyes. There was such nervous activity about her grip as she yanked Nathalie’s hand like a pump-handle that that young lady had no doubts as to her surplus energy. As Kitty tried to make her escape there was a suppressed howl, and then a twitter, for alas, she had backed into one of her companions with such force that the victim almost lost her balance.

The girls, each one smiling, but with a palpitating heart as if doubtful what Helen would say when her turn came, all looked up expectantly as a tall girl, somewhat older than the others, but with a certain dash about her that added to her charm, came forward. She moved with willowy grace and had an ease of manner that accentuated the Pot-Boiler’s embarrassed movements.

“Miss Page, allow me to introduce you to Miss Lillie Bell.” There was a certain emphasis in Helen’s tone as she presented this pretty, attractive girl, that indicated her pride in one of the most popular girls belonging to the group.

Miss Bell smiled in a self-assured manner as Helen introduced her, and then greeted Nathalie with sweet graciousness as she waited expectantly for her characterization to be given.

“Lillie is our story-teller,” continued Helen with a gleam of mischief in her eyes, “a would-be thriller, for we all shiver with the creeps when she begins her yellow-journal romances. Her specialty is ghost tales, the kind that, as we sit in the dark around our cheer fire, its glare (blood-red, please note), casting weird shadows over our pallid faces—” Helen intoned in tragic burlesque, and then stopped with a laugh.

Lillie Bell, however, did not appear at all annoyed at this banter, but returned coolly, “I hope Miss Page, you will not believe all Helen says, for she dotes on teasing, but we get even with her when the chance comes.” From a certain gleam in the smiling gray eyes Nathalie did not doubt her, but as her voice was musical, and her manner impressive, bordering on the dramatic, she wished she could hear one of her thrillers.

“Observe,” tantalized the spokesman as Lillie disappeared and her place was taken by a young girl who looked as if she was all blood and muscle, with ruddy cheeks, alert eyes, and the poise and bearing of one who was a frequenter of the gym.

As Helen said, “This is Miss Edith Whiton,” she made an old-time curtsy, “generally dubbed the Sport, as she is the champion knee-doubler, arm-stretcher, toe-raiser, and all the rest of the ball-and-socket team.”

With attempted nonchalance Edith twisted her shoulders and flashed Helen a quick glance as much as to say, “Wait, my turn is coming later!” She then stepped forward and shook Nathalie’s hand, smiling pleasantly down at her with frank friendliness.

As she made her way back to her seat, a pale, studious-looking young girl with a head that looked almost top-heavy with its black braids, and who wore glasses, presented herself before Nathalie. She smiled nervously as Helen began, “Oh, this owl-like individual is Barbara Worth; she is very learned—she knows it all.”

“Oh, Helen!” came in pained expostulation from the girl, as her eyes turned distressfully upon her hostess in shamed embarrassment.

“Oh, Barbara, don’t mind,” spoke up Lillie Bell kindly, “Helen is only in fun.”

Barbara looked somewhat relieved at this brace to her injured feelings, and then stood nervously clasping and unclasping her hands together.

“Yes,” went on Helen relentlessly, “we call her the Encyclopedia for short. Wait until you want to know something in a hurry, she will help you out, for she has the best heart in the world.” With a little ripple of laughter Helen leaned forward and looking up at Barbara cried, “There, did I say anything so dreadful?”

Barbara smiled gratefully and then said quietly, “Yes, Miss Page, I have a fine library, it is grandfather’s, and I shall—” she drew a deep breath—“always be glad to live up to my name.”

There was loud clapping at this brave remark and then she was gone, but in her place stood a little lass who smiled bewitchingly at the girl in the chair, showing a coy little dimple in one cheek, and then with a slight frown waited for her executioner to behead her.

“This little damsel is Louise Gaynor,” introduced Helen; “she is the Flower of the family—spelt both ways. We call her flower, because she resembles one,” Louise bowed prettily with a surprised glance, “and then because she is an expert manipulator of the flour bag; she makes most edible flapjacks when we go on a hike. It is needless to say that we always have indigestion afterwards.” There was a laugh at this, and then as the Flower disappeared, Helen drew to her side a diminutive girl who wore her flaxen hair in two large braids down her back. With her broad, good-natured face and cornflower blue eyes she was a miniature Gretchen.

“This is Carol Tyke—we spell it T-i-k-e, because she is a tike and the fag of the group as well.” The little girl, who was about eleven, but small for her age, grinned at Nathalie and ducked her head. “She is a Junior Pioneer, not yet twelve. But we have her in training and she is taking tests daily, which doesn’t give her much leisure time, does it, Tike?”

At last, much to Nathalie’s relief, the introductions were over, and then she listened intently as the girls began to tell her of a hike they had taken the week before, when one of their number had found a hundred different leaf specimens.

“Yes, it was a leaf hike,” said Grace. “We all have our own note-books; and make impressions from the leaves; that is, we print them in our books, and then write the date of the hike, the name of the leaf, and any other data we have gathered.”

“I should think it would be very interesting,” remarked her listener, as she thought of the outings she and her schoolmates used to take on Saturday mornings when they visited Bronx Park, and studied “cooped-up nature” as one of the girls used to call it, when they eyed some fierce monarch of the forest in his iron cage, or exclaimed over the beauties of some hot-house flower.

“We are going to have a wild-flower hike soon,” volunteered the Tike, smiling at Nathalie in a most friendly manner. “The Sport says there are a lot of beautiful flowers in the woods near Edgemere, didn’t you, Sport?”

“But I wish you would tell me something about your tests—is that what you call them?” Nathalie asked. “I should think they would be no end of fun if they mean making one do stunts, or anything in the hazing line?”

“Oh, we do not haze, or anything of that sort, for that would not be kind, and kindness is one of the laws of the Girl Pioneer,” explained Grace. “By tests we mean trying to see what a girl can do that is useful, and if she can’t do it, we teach her. We have to sew, cook, and know all the emergency things.”

“You mean the First Aid to the Injured methods,” corrected Helen; “knowing what to do to revive a person when almost drowned, how to put out a fire—”

“How to bathe and bandage a sprained foot—”

“You needn’t tell me you know that,” cried Nathalie with sparkling eyes, “for I know by experience,” and then she told the girls what the doctor had said about Helen’s skillful way of binding her foot—in spite of that young lady’s blushes at this open praise—and how clever her mother thought the girls were for the ready way in which they had made the stretcher from their khaki skirts.

“Then we have to know how to restore a person who has fainted,” some one volunteered.

“And learn the Fireman’s Lift,” added another girl.

“Oh, let’s tell things from the beginning!” interrupted some methodical girl from the farther end of the porch.

“Oh, but I told Miss Page—” Helen stopped, for her hostess was looking at her with beseeching eyes, clearly due to the formal title.

“Won’t you please call me Nathalie?” the owner of that name ventured with a coaxing little smile.

“If you will say Helen,” replied the girl with evident delight.

The girls both laughed, shook hands on it, and then Helen continued. “Yes, I told Nathalie all about the tests for the third-class Pioneer. Well, to become a second-class Pioneer it is necessary to have been a third-class Pioneer for at least a month. Then you have to know how to cook a piece of meat properly—”

“Boil a potato as it should be done!” interrupted Lillie Bell. This was impressively said, and followed by a chime of laughter from the girls.

“And make a coal fire in a cooking-stove—ye stars!” ejaculated Grace, “when I made my first, I literally smoked every one in the house to a ham—but when I made my first out-of-door fire—”

“You didn’t do any better,” cried Lillie Bell irrelevantly, “for you sooted the whole bunch of us.”

“Oh, Lillie,” cried Grace in dismayed tone, “that wasn’t from making the fire, for I was the only one who made it with a single match, but it was from putting it out.”

“Now girls, don’t tell tales; for, as Mrs. Morrow says, we are all breakable and no one should cast the first stone,” called out their leader.

“Oh, the tests are all easy but the next one,” cried Edith Whiton, “that is not a cinch by any means: how to remove a cinder from the eye—”

“Or any other foreign substance!”

“We have to know all the primary colors, too,” went on Edith.

“Pshaw, any kindergarten kid knows that,” spoke the Encyclopedia, who up to this moment had taken no part in this flow of information, “but to tie a bundle properly, that means hard labor.”

“Yes, indeed,” added Jessie Ford quickly, “one has to have an awful lot of practice to do that. I worked so hard tying up bundles at home for every one in the house that Father suggested I apply for a position as bundle-wrapper at some department store. And I would have, just for a joke, if I hadn’t succeeded in making every one for whom I tied a bundle give me five cents—and I made a dollar.” Her eyes gleamed reminiscently.

“You have forgotten about the trees!” called out the Sport.

“Yes, we have to name three kinds of trees, three flowers and three birds.”

“Easy!” chimed the girls in unison.

“But the hardest—that was for me—” exclaimed Grace (Nathalie bent forward eagerly, for somehow she did like Grace), “was to earn or to save fifty cents and put it in the bank.” There was a general shout at this, for, as Helen explained in an aside to Nathalie, Grace was the richest girl in the Pioneer group. She had a beautiful home, her own automobile, her own allowance, and yet she was always hard up.

“She’s awfully generous, you know, and doesn’t know how to count her pennies,” she added wisely, “the way we girls do, because we have to. But she’s learning.”

But Helen’s whispered comments about her friend were not all heard by Nathalie, who suddenly stiffened, and with a quick exclamation leaned forward and stared curiously at a gray figure that was walking past the house with strained, averted eyes, as if fearful that she might see the group of merry girls on the veranda.

“Who is that lady all in gray?” she demanded, abruptly clutching Helen’s arm as her eyes followed the gliding figure of the strange-appearing woman whose library card she had found the day of her accident in the woods.

Helen looked up quickly in response to Nathalie’s question, but before she could answer, Kitty Corwin cried hastily, “Girls, look! there goes ‘The Mystic’!”

CHAPTER IV—NATHALIE IS ASKED TO BECOME A BLUE ROBIN

“The Mystic!” echoed Nathalie in mild amazement, while one or two of the group turned and gazed curiously at the gray-shrouded figure hurrying by.

“You needn’t ask me to look at her,” asserted the Sport with a scowl, “after screwing up my courage as I did to ask her if we could use her terraced lawn for one of our drills; why, the glance she gave me almost froze me stiff!”

The girls laughed at Edith’s tragic tone, while Lillie Bell retorted teasingly, “Well, she must be a chill-raiser, Edith, if she could freeze the marrow in your spine.”

“Girls, you should not speak as you do about Mrs. Van Vorst,” admonished Helen, “you know Mrs. Morrow says that she has suffered a great sorrow.”

“Pshaw, we all know that,” returned the Sport unfeelingly, “but that is no reason why she should make every one else suffer, too.”

“Granted,” rejoined Helen, “but she has grown to look at things through morbid eyes.”

“I should think the gray gown she wears would make any one morbid,” suggested Lillie. “But what is the use of discussing her? I believe she is just a crank with a fad,” she added.

“Who is she, and why does she go about in that queer gray gown?” inquired Nathalie, insistently.

“She is Mrs. Van Vorst, the richest woman in town,” explained Grace. “She lives in that big, gray house surrounded by the stone wall. Haven’t you noticed it? It’s on Willow Street, up on the hill. You must have seen it.”

“Oh, the big house with the beautiful Dutch garden,” exclaimed Nathalie, “and the queer little house at one side of it?”

“Yes,” nodded Helen, “but that queer little house is an ancient landmark—a Dutch homestead—built on a grant of land given by Governor Stuyvesant to Janse Van Vorst way back in 1667. The Van Vorsts, or their descendants, have lived on that place for hundreds of years. Billy Van Vorst, the last of the line, married Betty Walton, a rich New York girl. He died some years ago, and—well, I don’t know the exact story—” Helen hesitated, “but they say Mrs. Van Vorst has an awful temper—oh, I hate to tell it—and then it may not be true.”

“But it is true,” asserted Jessie Ford, “for Mother used to know Billy and Betty, too. She said shortly after Billy’s death Mrs. Van Vorst became angry with her little child—I don’t know whether it is a boy or girl—and—”

“Whatever it is,” broke in Edith, “it is all distorted and twisted, looks like a monster, for I saw it one day in the garden, the day I was there. It is always muffled up so people can’t see it.”

“Well, anyway,” went on Jessie, “Mrs. Van Vorst got into a temper with the child and shut it up in a dark room, and then went off to a reception or something, and forgot all about it.”

“Oh, how could she?” ejaculated Nathalie with a shudder.

“Well, when she came home and remembered it—it wasn’t in the room—”

“And they found it all in a heap on the pavement in the yard,” again interrupted Edith, anxious to forestall the climax; “I have heard all about it, they say it was an awful sight.”

“Dead?” cried Nathalie in a shocked tone.

“No, not dead,” returned Jessie, “but it might as well have been. It had become frightened in the dark, said some one was chasing it, and in trying to escape climbed out on a shed and fell to the ground. Mrs. Van Vorst was ill for a long time, almost lost her mind. Then she gave up society and came down here and built this big house beside the homestead. She has lived in it ever since, but keeps to herself; she doesn’t seem to want to know people.”

“Oh, I don’t wonder she mourns in gray then!” exclaimed Nathalie. “I feel sorry for her!”

“And so do I!” chimed Helen squeezing her new friend’s hand responsively, “for she will have to suffer remorse all her life. Mother says she is to be pitied.”

“Well, I should have more pity for her if she would let us have the lawn back of her house for our flag drill,” remarked Lillie Bell, “or for one of our demonstrations.”

“You can be sure I’ll never ask her again,” declared the Sport, vehemently; “I believe she hates us just because we are young, and can enjoy life when her child can’t.”

At this moment Grace arose and handed Nathalie a peculiar-looking envelope of rough brown paper. “No, it won’t explode,” she giggled, as she saw Nathalie handling the quaintly-folded envelope rather gingerly.

“You needn’t think it is the butcher’s bill, either,” laughed Helen, “for it isn’t. It is simply an invitation to one of our group meetings, or Pioneer Rallies, as we call them. We always use that kind of paper when we invite guests, for it was the kind used in pioneer times.”

Reassured by Helen’s explanation, Nathalie opened the envelope, noting the old-style script printed by hand in scarlet letters, evidently the work of one of the Pioneers. Then she slowly read aloud: