CHAPTER I

THE ACORN

It was Corene's idea. She had just returned from a glorious two weeks spent in a real Girl Scouts' Camp, and the brief time acted like a whiff of something good, and it tasted like more and Corene wanted it.

"Two weeks!" she repeated moodily.

"What can you expect?" queried Louise. "Everyone must have a turn."

"And two weeks make a real vacation for many girls," insisted Cleo.

"Two weeks spent right in one spot--in the ocean, for instance, would seem an awful long time to me," said fun-making Grace.

"Besides all that, you went away to camp early on account of having finished your school work," Cleo reminded her, "and consequently those very two weeks are so much extra. We haven't gone away at all yet."

"I know," agreed the abused one, "and please don't slap me, or do anything like that, girls. I have just been thinking of those wonderful days----" She slid down and thrust her feet out so suddenly and determinedly that she upset a harmless little vase, water, flowers and all, right on the floor of the recreation room.

It was one of the many "last days" of school. The group of girls in the Essveay School made the usual vacation plans, remade them and then amiably agreed to those made by home and mother; but all this in no way affected the present outburst of enthusiasm.

By rare good fortune many of the girls were privileged to spend their summers along the Jersey coast, or in the mountains between New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the intimacy of their school days was thus uninterrupted.

"Then, Corene," returned Cleo, "what do you intend to do about it? You can't hope to go back again to the big camp?"

"Oh, no; I suppose not. But everything will seem so tame," lamented the bobbed-haired girl.

"Tame!" repeated Louise. "You always have a livelier time out in Llynardo than we do at Sea Crest. At least you don't have to change your costume three or four times a day."

"I wouldn't do it," returned Corene. "What's the sense in going away for a good time and spending it amusing other folks?"

"How so, amusing other folks?" repeated Julia.

"Surely no one dresses to amuse herself," retorted the practical Corene. "I like pretty things, and all that, but I hate summer simping. Buddie calls it 'simping,' although he probably means primping."

"When we put on our Scout uniform last year we saved a lot of that," reflected Cleo.

"Which was it, Scout uniform or riding-habit, Cleo? It seems to me you spent a lot of time on horseback," Julia reminded her.

"And I intend to do the same this year as well," declared Cleo. "That's the reason we are going to the mountains."

"Same here," agreed Louise. "We had a good time riding last year, but there were days when the sun was too hot. Now, under the trees in the mountains----" A sudden breeze blew in and sent layers of papers flying about.

"There you are!" commented Corene. "There's your mountain breeze, girls. No use bothering going any further."

"Oh, h-h--!" sighed a chorus.

"If it would only stay," continued Cleo. "What is so hot as a day in June?" she misquoted.

"The first hot day in September, after school opens," answered Louise, fanning her flushed cheeks with Julia's latest story. "At any rate, let's go into classroom and try that science puzzle again. I'm not sure whether I made a bug or a bird for the seven-year locust."

It was that evening, when these girls as neighbors had gathered on Julia's porch, that the subject of a summer camp was taken up with added interest.

"I've been talking to mother about it," said Julia, "and she agrees we could have a much healthier and even happier time if we went to the mountains. We might miss the bathing----"

"But we will have the lake--the wonderful, pretty, friendly old Lake Hocomo!" enthused Cleo. "The ocean is lovely, of course, but don't you think it's awfully samey?"

"Samey? Oh, you mean similarly," joked Louise.

"No, she means monotonously," ventured Grace.

"Or synonymously," added Corene.

"Say, girls!" asked Cleo, "were we talking about the ocean or false syntax? I've sort of strayed off a little. I think I recall, however, that the lake was said to be lovely, and I'm willing to stick to that. Who votes for the lake?"

"I do!"

"I do!"

"I do!" everyone voted for it, so it was agreed again that all would go to the lake, if their folks went with them, of course. And then Corene returned to her story of the wonders of camp life.

"But didn't you have to wash a lot of horrid dishes?" asked Grace.

"We washed dishes, certainly," replied the favored one, "but it was fun doing it. We had races at it and prizes, and when one does things that way it's fun, you know."

"I'm going to try that with Benny," declared Grace. "Our folks are again maidless, so Benny and I help. I'll race Benny and offer my class pin as prize," she decided.

"Your class pin for Benny? Why, Grace! You dishonor the Essveays. Make it a buckle or a barrette. Either would be just as useful to Benny. He's sure to win, we all know that, for boys always win at anything they try out," declared Julia.

"Yes, by dumping dishes in, and dumping them out, and putting them over the gas oven to dry," retorted Grace. "That's the way a boy is so sure to win in a dish-washing contest. But never mind that. Tell us, Corey, what do you propose for camp?"

"Make one, build one, run one," she proposed simply.

"Just like that!" added Cleo, with a chuckle. "Do you mean on paper or in the woods, Corey?"

"In the woods, certainly," again came the measured reply, and it didn't measure very much at that.

"Oh, be a dear and tell us how," begged Louise, settling herself in the cushions of the porch swing for a real story. "I want to dream about something other than school to-night, and I'd just love it to be camp."

"A nice, wild, grizzly bear camp," added Grace. She skidded over to the swing and squirmed in beside Louise.

"There are no bears at Lake Hocomo," said Cleo, "that is, there are none there now; although to hear dad talk of his boyhood vacations there, one might think the zoo was originally stocked from that region. At any rate, Corey, splutter along with the plan, but don't make me wash dishes. Leave them to the prize contestants," with a shot of rose-ball at Grace.

"Very well," decided Corene, "and this is my idea." They all settled back comfortably now, for Corene did not usually give out her "ideas" until they had been very carefully formulated. She was the acknowledged leader in athletics among her group, she would rather go to the gym than to a party, she took toe dancing long after her friends gave up the "childish art," and she had aspirations towards physical culture as a profession, to be adopted by her after she had acquired a thorough knowledge of everything pertaining to it. That was Corene's way.

"We are all to go to Lake Hocomo this year," she began in preliminary argument for the camp idea.

"Yes'm," chirped Julia.

"And we are going to have our own riding club," suggested Cleo, who would agree to anything that included horseback riding.

"All right, Cleo, that can be arranged, of course," said Corene. "But it is not a--what do you call it?"

"Fundamental!" offered Louise.

"That's it. We will decide first on our fundamentals. The very first is a camp. For that we must organize a patrol consisting of eight girls," said the capable Corene.

"We can have those we had last year, and all of them have been attending Scout meetings this winter," put in Julia.

"Yes, we won't have any trouble with our eight, but we may have trouble not making it eighteen," said Cleo. "We always have a lot of calls from girls who want to come in, you know."

"Yes, but we must be efficient," insisted the logical leader. "We couldn't take in girls and let them call themselves Scouts if they had not gone through all the tests."

"Of course not," agreed Louise. She was always apt to agree on limitations. Louise was a bit conservative that way.

"But we may find other girls at the lake who are qualified--who are regular Scouts, you know," put in Cleo the democrat.

"A patrol should be composed of eight," insisted Corene, "and when a rule of that kind is decided by the organization we may be sure it is the best. So let it be eight."

"Remember those famous lines, 'We Are Seven'?" recalled Cleo. "We may transpose them to 'We Are Eight' and I'll get brother Jerry to put a tune to them. Oh, really, girls, I can see the camp all ready. Shall we have to build it, Corey?"

"If you don't run over me in the telling I may get something told, bye-and-bye," complained Corene. "We may have to build our camp if we want one far enough away from the cottages, and I don't think any other kind is worth while."

"No, of course it isn't," agreed Julia. "We don't want to put up a few curtains in a garage and pay ten dollars to have an artistic sign made for it, then call that combination a camp."

This brought out the rollicking spirits for which the little group was justly famous, and the cushion fight that followed was a spasm of pure mirth. Little girls they were, indeed; although each of them had earned a grammar grade certificate that opened to her the doors of "High," yet the spirit of care-free little-girlishness was still happily theirs, and it was a matter of complete congeniality that bound them together, year after year, from Primary to Grammar, and now from Grammar to High.

"If we are always going to end up with some silly nonsense," said Julia sagely, although she was personally more responsible for pillow tossing than were the others, "I don't see how we will ever get anything planned."

"We don't really have to make plans now," Grace qualified. "All we have to do is just to talk about them."

"That's about all we can do," said Corene, "but we have all voted for a camp, haven't we?"

A shout of enthusiastic assent followed the question.

"Then, just remember you have all promised to do your part toward making and keeping that camp," warned the instigator.

"Do we take guns for big woozy wolves?" asked Grace, growling descriptively.

"And axes to cut down our timber with?" put in Cleo.

"Remember Buddie's sling shot? I'll be sure to take that for hooty owls," added Louise.

"Please don't get the idea that we may shoot things, or injure birds, or do any such cruel things," counselled Corene. "Of course I know you wouldn't hurt a spider, Louise," she hurried to explain, "but I am still so filled with real camp rules I sort of blow them off now and again."

"We will give you plenty of time and opportunity to apply your rules, Corey," said Julia, "and just think, only three days more!"

"Oh, h--h--h!" came the chorus common to every school grade that actually faces the final "three days."

But they were too care-free to even anticipate what the camp prospect might hold for them.

Not all the adventures of the woods are limited to "woozy bears and hooty owls."

Which recalls something of their experiences as told in the other volumes of this series. It was in "The Girl Scout Pioneers, or Winning The First B. C." that this same group of girls went through some interesting Scouting in a Pennsylvania mill town. Two foreign girls, Dagmar and Tessie, "wandered far afield" but were finally brought under the influence of the Scout movement through a most dramatic climax. The second volume, "The Girl Scouts at Bellaire," is the story of the lost orchid. The precious bulb was brought from Central America but lost _en route_, and when Maid Mary, the queer little flower girl, was eventually won over to trust the Scouts, they came upon the priceless orchid as it struggled to grow through the arm of a saw-dust doll.

"The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest" has a very queer girl, Kitty Scuttle, for its heroine. This girl lives on a mysterious island upon which no one is allowed to land. But the Girl Scouts find a way, and when they do so they also find out how to rescue Kitty and the millionaire child, Royal. This little Peter Panish boy has been hidden on Looney Island by an unscrupulous nurse.

So it happens that the summer opening and for which the girls are planning must indeed be a time replete with adventure, if the reputation of this group of Girl Scouts is to be maintained.