Gradually Rose sensed the difference in American and foreign ideals, and now it was as if the curtain had lifted, and her own mind was cleared of the confusing doubts and suspicions she had heretofore struggled with.

The soft, sweet air of young summer wafted from the flowery vines, caressed her pretty face as she stared out of the low window into the velvet night, and she was glad, so glad she had sent those roses!

“If only I could have returned that badge!” she pondered; “why did Tessie run off with it!”

The dark thought immediately cast a shadow over her happiness just at that moment, a vagrant cloud in a sky almost untarnished, deliberately sailed into the moon, and blackened the window through which Rose gazed.

“I guess that means bed!” she decided and promptly slipped between the grateful covers.  But not to sleep.  The thoughts of Tessie and her insinuating letters were too persistent to be immediately banished.  Try as she might, Rose could find no key to the problem of how to reach the girl and reclaim the innocent badge, now serving as a baneful influence in the uncertain career of Tessie Wartliz.

“If only I could talk with her just a few minutes,” Rose kept repeating, and that wish became the source of a plan, from which sprung a new resolve.

She must see Tessie!

Fixed in her brain, that resolve actually took root, and even in sleep it seemed to grow, to get stronger with the hours, and to mature with courage silently imparted through tired nature’s sweet restorer.  Balmy sleep!

Troubled dreams discovered the runaway girl in strange surroundings, now working in a dark gloomy mill, and flashing her black eyes like lighted coals at every word of correction offered by her superiors, again Tessie seemed to be enjoying the soft luxury of some favored home, a wild flower in a garden of hot-house blooms.

But it was all a dream, and Rose knew nothing of Tessie’s adventure, beyond the suspicions conveyed in the two sketchy letters sent since the escapade.

A few days later the Leader, an evening paper, contained a story startling to the girls of Flosston, and positively shocking to Rose Dixon.  This told of a young girl claiming to be a girl scout, running off with a lot of ticket money, the funds she had obtained by pretending to assist an entertainment being conducted for the benefit of the Violet Circle of Shut-ins.

That a girl scout should rob cripples!  And that a clue should lead back to Flosston, inferring the culprit might belong in that town!  Instantly Rose knew the mystery meant Tessie, and that the purloined badge had served as her scout credential!

Panic seized her!  She had seen the paper on her way home from work, and at table, when Molly Cosgrove discussed the item, Rose felt her own guilt must be obvious to those around her.  Yet no one knew Tessie had taken the badge.  No one knew Rose had found the pretty emblem!