Once, when the post-office clerk emerged from the drug-store, Tessie pulled her hat down until the pin at back tugged viciously in her coil of black hair.  That clerk might recognize her, and her folks surely called for mail occasionally.  But the clerk never raised his head, as Gyp sauntered along, and it was a relief to make sure that her new and different outfit was a complete disguise.  No one would now recognize her as Tessie Wartliz, of Fluffdown Mills.

“I have to get Miss Douglass some daisies.  See that lovely field over there!  Could we stop long enough for me to gather a bunch?” she asked Frank presently.

“Sure thing!” replied the boy merrily.  “I only have to turn in a few more boxes, and then my time’s my own.  Sometimes I take my sister Bessie when I come out here, and once mother came.  But she wanted to knit.  Can you beat that:  knitting on a grocery wagon?”

“Oh, folks who like it knit in their sleep, I guess,” replied Tessie, giving the reins to Frank that he might turn safely into the field over the rough little hill at the roadside.

“And say,” went on Frank, “I put a chair in back for ma, and rode along the avenue as innocent as a lamb.  Of course I was whistling and can you guess what happened?”

“Mother went out the back way?” asked Tessie.

“Surest thing you know.  I looks back, and there went ma and her cane-seat chair, doing a regular cake-walk, along the boulevard.  Oh, man!  What she didn’t say to me!” and Frank shouted a laugh that made Gyp jump clear over the last hillock.

“Best to sit on stationary seats when one goes grocery riding,” commented Tessie.  “Now I’ll pick daisies, and you can whistle all you like.”

“But I’m goin’ to pick,” insisted Frank.  “I’ll race you,” and with the boy’s proverbial love of sport, even picking daisies became a novel game.

It took but a short time to fill arms with the plentiful white blossoms, tacked on their green stems with gold buttons, and presently Tessie was ready to embark again, after Frank had deposited both bunches of daisies in an empty box back of the seat.

Out on the road once more, Tessie caught sight of a girl she knew well.  It was Nettie Paine, who sold spools of crochet cotton in the little fancy shop, and how glad Tessie would be to stop and buy a few spools just now!  She could make such a pretty camisole top—­but—­no, it would be foolish to take such a risk.  So she reluctantly turned her head away from the fancy-goods store.

“Now, just one more stop!” Frank announced.  “I have to buy some things at the stationers.  You hold Gyp in, Stacia.  We’re quite near the track, and he doesn’t love the Limited Express.”

But Stacia (or Tessie) allowed the reins to lay loosely in her lap as she watched a girl scout in uniform approach.  She was alone and tramped with a sure tread that might have marked her a True Tred had Tessie any knowledge of the troop’s name.  “Those girls are everywhere,” she told herself, and then fell to day dreams of girl scout possibilities.