Honors are mighty apt to shock a person when they come unexpectedly, and I don’t believe expected ones bring half the joy that the surprise ones do.  I feel humble to think that in less than a year the boys and girls of a place like Byrdsville have found me worthy of the leadership of such a sacred thing as a Girl Scout company will be.  For, of course, of all the things that boys ever were in the world, nothing is so wonderful as being Scouts like so many hundreds and hundreds have been made all over the United States in the last three years.  And when the Boy Scouts do all the noble things in the noble way they do, what will be expected of the girls, now that they are being let Into the organization?  The boys have to pledge themselves to be clean and honorable and kind and just and charitable and brave; so, of course, the girls will have to be all that and still more.  Could I?

I sat still and thought for a long time, and Tony, with his knowledge of girls, let me do it.  Could I?  Could a girl with a father that might have done the thing that my father is suspected of having done to a fellow-man, promise to be all or any of those things?  How would she know that some little thing in her, like her father, wouldn’t come up, just at the time when she was being depended on, to make her fail?  This distinction was not for me!

“Tony,” I said quietly, and I didn’t let the tremble in my heart get into my voice at all, “whatever happens to me in my life I can’t ever forget that you offered to make me the leader of the Campfire, but—­I can’t be it.  Please don’t make me say any more about it.  I can’t.”

Tony understood.  “Not a word more on the subject, Bubble; but I do want to say that you are one fine—­”

But just here we were interrupted by Mamie Sue coming lumbering across the wall from the Byrd cottage, for Tony and I had been sitting on a bench out under the blooming peach-tree arbor.  She sat pretty close to me and gave me a nice, good, fat-armed hug as she offered me a paper bag.

“Have some fudge, Phyllis,” was all she said; but I saw Belle walking down the street with her head in the air and her skirts switching like Helena’s and I knew that Mamie Sue had come through a hard fight to be friends with me.  I can’t say how I appreciated it, and I love Mamie Sue.  Maybe she is not very smart, but a person that always has sweetness of disposition and in paper bags to offer a friend in trouble ought to be appreciated.  And just as I had got hold of her nice big right arm to return the hug, around the other side of the house came Pink and Sam, with Miss Priscilla in between them.

“Phyllis dear,” said Miss Prissy, as all of us got up to give her a seat, though she only took Tony’s and part of mine, while the boys sat on the grass, “the boys are telling me about the Girl Scout ideas.  I think it is naughty of them to say they are going to name you the Kitten Patrol, especially as your rescue of Lovey Byrd is more than likely to give you a life-saving medal to start with, as soon as the Colonel writes to New York about it.”