“Oh, goody-good!” sang out Grace.  “Now I can surely get my nature work all nicely covered.  I’ll tell Madaline.  She is over there coaxing Cleo,” and with a risky flourish of her red tie, a hop, skip and a jump, the Tenderfoot pranced across the big green schoolyard, in a fashion that belied her limitations on the tenderfoot basis.

“Yes, I’ll go,” Cleo was agreeing, “but I am afraid we can’t get Captain Clark.  I know she is going out to Kingsley to form a troop.  Maybe we can get Lieutenant Lindsley.  She is free from Normal at four.  They have a lecture after two-thirty almost every day.”

“Oh, Lieutenant Lindsley would be lots of fun.  She knows everything in hill and dale, and is not afraid of snakes or cows.  But do you think we should notify the other girls?  It is rather hard to get in touch with them in time,” Grace ranted on.

By this time Margaret and Madaline had joined the group, and now all the scouts in seventh and eighth grammar grades were discussing plans for the precipitous hike.  There were Mable Blake, also a tenderfoot, Adaline Allen and Mildred Clark, second grades, and the McKay twins, first class scouts.  All of these willingly agreed to make the foot trip out to the Falls.

The afternoon school session received scant attention from the prospective hikers, the Tenderfoots especially being absorbed in the prospects of a spring afternoon in the woods.

So interested were Grace and Madaline they exchanged preparatory notes in the five minute rest period, although that time was set aside for real relaxation, and no one was supposed to use eyes or fingers during the short rest.

When school was finally dismissed the girls arranged to pass the homes of most of the group, as many of them lived on the same Oakley Avenue, and thus notify parents of their scout plans for the hike, and when Lieutenant Lindsley was eventually picked up from the practicing department of the Normal School, the ranks were filled, and the hike moved off towards the River Road.

It was a glorious afternoon, in late April.  The peach blossoms were just breaking into pink puff balls, and the pear trees were burdened with a crop of spring “snow,” fragrant in their whitest of dainty blossoms.

But the still life beauties were not more attractive than the joyous, happy, romping girls, who capered along from the more noisy town streets, into the highways and byways of the long green stretch of country leading to the river brink, and to the woods on its border.

“I’m going to do something really great,” declared Grace.  “I don’t care just what it is, but I want to have a real record, when I am called up to take my degree test.  I am not afraid of anything in daylight, so beware!  I may do something very desperate and rash this afternoon.”

“Spare us,” pleaded Madaline.  “I have seen some of our courage worked out in the woods before.  Remember the time you nearly set fire to the river?  Well, don’t, please, go try anything like that today.”