CHAPTER XIX

THE FLYING SQUADRON

“Oh, Grace, what do you think?” Thus asked Madaline without hint or warning.

“Think?  This is no time for thinking,” answered Grace, who was busying herself with a complicated system of cords.  “I’m trying to puzzle out the best way to demonstrate a sheep-shank knot,” and she kept on with her endeavor, flipping the cord ends this way and that, while Madaline, all impatience, looked down at her chum.

“Trying to tie a sheep-shank!” gasped the Bearer of tidings, as she presently proved herself to be.  “Why, the very idea!  You passed that test long ago—­you’re no tenderfoot!”

“I know it, but Captain Clark said she was going to ask me to show a new group of candidates some knots, and I thought I’d practice a bit.”

“Practice!” repeated Madaline, “well, to use your own words, this is no time to practice.  Oh, Grace!  I can hardly tell you!”

“Don’t tell me it’s anything bad!” exclaimed the manipulator of the knots.  “Has anything happened?  Is Cleo or Margaret—­”

“No, no!  It isn’t anything like that.  Cleo and Margaret are all right, and they’ll be here in a little while.  I ran on ahead to tell you, and Captain Clark is coming, too, with them.”

“Well, of all things!” Grace burst out, laying aside the strings.  “Something simply must have happened.  Do you mean to say the delegation is waiting on me, to inform me that I have been picked out for some signal honor, ahem!” and she rose, bowing elaborately.

“We have all been picked out for signal honor!” bubbled Madaline.  “You aren’t the only one.  Put up that knot business.  You can show the tenderfeet when you get back.”

“Oh, are we going away?” asked Grace.  “Mystery piled on mystery.  Do tell me!”

“I thought I’d get you anxious,” laughed Madaline.  “Well, it’s just this, and it’s simply glorious!  We’re going camping!”

“Camping?  Who?  When?  Where?  What, and all the rest of it?” and she fired the questions in a well-aimed volley at her friend.

“Just we four and the Captain, of course,” resumed Madaline, seating herself on a mossy log beside Grace, who had selected this seat in the woods as a silent seclusion, there to evolve a scheme for imparting primary knowledge of Girl Scout work, to a group of younger members who had lately joined.

“We called at your house to tell you,” continued Madaline, “but your mother said you were over here in the woods, so we came to find you—­all four of us.  I just ran on ahead—­I couldn’t wait for the others.”

“I’m so glad you did,” said Grace, warmly.  “But how does it come that we four are picked out from all the troop?”

“Well, I fancy it’s because we sort of out-did ourselves in the tests, and helped to get such, a satisfactory report.  Captain Clark said she wanted to reward us in some way, and the opportunity came, so she pounced on it, or seized it or grasped it—­you know—­whatever you properly should do to an opportunity.”