The merit badge of True Tred Troop!

CHAPTER XVIII

DAISIES AND DANGERS

In the week following Tessie made a number of acquaintances about Glenmoor, not the least among such being Frank Pierson, the grocer boy, and glad to see a young girl on the big estate, Frank promptly asked Tessie to take a ride out in the country with him some afternoon, and quite as promptly, Tessie accepted the invitation.

“I have to deliver out Flosston way tomorrow,” said Frank.  “What do you say to coming along?”

“Flosston!” repeated Tessie.  She hesitated.  Would she risk taking a look at the town in the mill end of which were still located the deserted members of her family?

“What’s the matter?  Don’t you want to go?” pressed Frank, as she withheld her reply.

“Oh, yes, of course I’ll go,” Tessie answered then, and having said she would go, the question of caution seemed to have solved itself.  After all, the grocer would have no business in the factory district, and it would be so good to see the familiar places again.  Since her coming to Jacqueline’s everything seemed so much brighter, her old fears of capture and perhaps detention in a corrective institution, had almost disappeared, and the prospect of a country ride with Frank Pierson afforded pleasant speculation indeed.

“You may bring me a big bunch of daisies,” Jacqueline told her, in granting permission for the afternoon out.  “Since you came I have almost lost Jerry.  But then, he was so very good, I am sure he should have been given a vacation.”

The little grocery wagon did not have to delay for its passenger when next afternoon Prank, with a clean blouse and his cap at exactly the right tilt, called to deliver goods and “collect” Tessie.

Starting out along the broad avenue, Gyp, the brown horse, jauntily drew the light yellow wagon, holding his head up quite as proudly as any flashy cob that passed with the fancy equipage in turn-out for the lovely afternoon driving.  Presently, from the fashionable thoroughfare Frank turned into the “Old Road,” that wended along railroad and river lines out Flosston way.

“You can drive here,” he conceded, handing the reins to Tessie.  “I don’t have to make another stop for half a mile.”

“I used to drive long ago, when I was a little girl with pigtails,” she answered, taking the lines.  “Gyp is gentle, isn’t he?”

“Yep, mostly he is.  But he scares up, once in a while.  Doesn’t like an umbrella shot up under his nose, and I’ve seen him dance at a postal card flaring up with the wind.”

Entering Flosston, Tessie felt more emotion than she expected to experience.  That last night in the town, when she and Dagmar waited at the station; their dispute over the road they should take; the finding of the badge, and the return of the girl scouts in search of it:  all this surged over her like a cloud, covering the bright sunshine that danced through the trees.  Frank evidently observed her preoccupation, for he made frantic efforts to be especially entertaining.