Just in time to don her black dress and white cap, Tessie reached the Osborne home.  She was so nervous the silver rattled and the china clicked, but the color in her cheeks was ascribed to the “long walk” she had taken “away out Pembroke way.”

During dinner Marcia and Phyllis talked continuously about the benefit, and made all their plans for ticket selling.  It would be a notable benefit.

Later that evening Mrs. Osborne paid Tessie her first week’s wages and complimented her on her “splendid service.”  She was a woman imbued with the wisdom of a keen appreciation of values, and she knew well the value of encouragement to a young girl like Tessie, but the latter was very miserable, and could scarcely hide the fact.

Now why did the ghost of a small mistake have to haunt her just when everything looked so rosy?

If only her mother and father could be counted on for a reasonable understanding of the whole matter, but the loss of their daughter’s wages for so long would surely enrage the avaricious father and anger the unreasonable mother.  Not much hope crept into poor Tessie’s heart as late that night she packed her little bag, and with many misgivings, overcome only by the strongest resolutions to pay back the money, did she put the ticket proceeds beside her week’s wages in the well-worn purse.

The scout badge fairly begged her to reconsider.  Its little wreath and clover emblem, the meaning of which Tessie had learned from Marcia’s manual, mutely pleaded the cause of honor, and urged her to sacrifice instead of deceit.

But Tessie was frightened and untrained, so that the new reverence, with which she folded that badge in her best ironed handkerchief, was not yet strong enough to call louder than the voice of mockery which hissed of dangers and threatened disgrace.

It was very early next morning that the dew on the hedge was shocked by a passing form making a rude getaway through the hawthorne blossoms, and not even the gardener saw the girl who jumped across the little creek instead of passing over the rustic bridge.

“Something has happened to that girl,” insisted Mrs. Osborne.  “I am not often mistaken, and I know she is not a common thief.  Marcia and Phyllis, you may refund the ticket money privately, and I will consult with father about following up the child.”  This was the verdict in the Osborne home upon the complex discovery of stolen tickets and missing maid; but in spite of the mother’s warning, some one must have trusted some one else with the story, for a brief account was used in the leader that night.

So this was the story that surprised the Girl Scouts of Flosston and shocked Rose Dixon.

Surely the strings of our mythical May-pole are winding in a circle of promise and surprise, for Tessie is gone and Rose is going!

Coincidently, out in Flosston our own little girl scouts, Cleo, Grace and Madaline, are worrying their pretty little heads over the mystery of the woodsman who wrote the queer letter.