“Let’s hunt four-leaf clovers,” suggested Madaline, “and we will give any we find to Captain Clark as a new pledge, like our own clover-leaf badge.”

“But ours are three-leaf, not four,” Cleo reminded her.  “Suppose we hunt the oddest, the prettiest, and the biggest number of varieties?  See these lovely variegated ones.  They come with the pink blossoms.  We might mount a whole display of leaves on one of brother’s butterfly glasses.  I think it would do for a nature study, also.”

“Oh, yes, that’s a perfectly splendid idea,” applauded Grace.  “I haven’t added a single discovery to my list this whole week.”

So absorbed did they become in this newly invented task no one noticed a wheel-chair being driven along the pleasant country footpath.  In the chair was a little girl about the age of the scouts—­perhaps fourteen years.  Her pretty face betrayed not the slightest hint of the infirmity which compelled her to recline in that chair, in fact her cheeks were as pink as the much-lauded color Grace was so often complimented upon, but which to herself seemed rudely healthy.

Directly in line with the three scouts who were crawling through the grass, hunting clovers, the nurse propelling the chair drew her little passenger to the roadside and stopped.

All the girls hunched up on their knees like human “bunnies” and the little girl in the wheel chair laughed outright.

Cleo stared her surprise.

“Oh, please excuse me for laughing,” spoke the child, “but you look too cunning—­just like—­like colored animals,” she faltered.

Cleo smiled her forgiveness, while at that moment Madaline shouted the find of the first four-leaf clover.

“And such a lovely big fat one!” she qualified, now skipping over the tall grasses quite kangaroo fashion.

“A four-leaf clover!” exclaimed the girl in the wheel chair as her nurse moved on.

“Oh, why didn’t we show it to her!” lamented Cleo.  “She can’t walk to pick them!”

“But she didn’t tell us who she was,” objected Grace.

“I don’t care.  I’m just going to run after her and give her this four-leaf clover,” declared the warm-hearted Madaline.  “I think we were awfully stiff and snippy,” and without waiting for approval she hurried after the disappearing chair, just as it turned into the avenue.

“Would you like this!” offered Madaline, almost breathless as she overtook the two strangers.

“Oh, I should love it!” exclaimed the little girl, the sincerity in her voice and expression vouching for the truth of her simple words.

Madaline wanted to say something else, but feared to touch on the delicate subject of the little girl’s infirmity.  So she merely smiled, and said she could find plenty more, and that she was a girl scout doing a little nature work.

“Oh, a girl scout!” exclaimed the little invalid, her eyes fairly blazing enthusiasm.