"Let's go prince hunting tomorrow," suggested Betta.

"With Treble's moth scoop?" joked Wyn.

"I suppose none of you happen to know that Mrs. Jerry Manton has a visitor," spoke Doro. She gave the statement a tone implying: "Why wouldn't the prince be the visitor?"

"Oh, that's so," drawled Thistle. "Maybe it's the duke."

This brought out a new shout of nonsense.

"Duke!" roared Betta. "Keep on and we'll have him on the throne."

"There are no more thrones," informed Pell. "Don't you know the war made every thing democratic?"

This turned the joke into a serious moment, for even the rollicking Scouts did not feel inclined to enlarge upon so serious a thought.

Presently everyone was speculating upon the possibility of the little stranger being the one entertained by the Mantons.

"Couldn't we call?" suggested Wyn. "Mrs. Manton is always lovely to us, and if she has such a little cherub on her hands we ought to help her care for him."

"Cherub, Wynnie! Why, we would have to get a cage for anything like that in this camp. He would be eaten by bugs, moths and beetles." A dash at a flying thing confirmed this opinion from Treble.

"Now, if you all have finished your skylarking I would like to study,"

announced Alma. "I have to learn all that new cla.s.s lesson, and I hope to get out of the Tenderfoot tribe before next week. No fun swimming in a barrel." She referred to the water restrictions of "Tenderfoots."

"Hush girls! Alma is thinking," joked Pell. "Please don't interrupt the spell----"

Poor Alma could stand the teasing no longer. She picked up her manual and headed for the tent occupied by those very studious Scouts who chose the company of the leader to that of the distracting girls.

"Chickadees never scratch," fired Betta as Alma stepped over protruding feet and reached the tent flap. "Now Chick-a-dee, Peep! Peep! Pretty for the ladies----"

But the girl with the manual was gone.

"What do you make of it?" asked Pell, when the t.i.tters subsided.

"She saw something different, that's sure," replied Treble.

"She told me all about it," put in Thistle proudly. "And it was really a wonderful child all done up in black velvets and ribbons," she declared.

"I see nothing to do but ask Mrs. Manton about it," suggested Wyn. "It looks like a first cla.s.s lot of fun."

"Ask her if she is entertaining a boy in velvet pants?" said Treble, so foolishly, the girls all but rolled under the table and the oil lamp shook dangerously in the merriment.

"When they're velvet they're never pants," spoke Wyn, as soon as speaking amounted to anything.

"Trousers," amended Treble.

"Nor those," objected Pell. "When they have cute little buckles and go with a jaunty cap----"

"They're knickers," finished Betta.

"Not a--tall," shouted Treble. "I know better than that myself. You're thinking of golf. Didn't I see Lord Fauntleroy play his Dearest?"

"Did you really? Well, what did _he_ call call them?" demanded Thistle.

She had been so busy enjoying the fun that this was her first attempt at making any.

"I have it," sang out Laddie. "They're bloomers."

"Oh no, rompers," insisted Thistle. "Rompers are much prettier."

"What ever would you girls have done this evening if Alma's little story did not furnish you with debate material," scoffed Doro.

"The story Alma never told," chanted Lad.

"All the same," declared Treble, "it is perfectly delicious. Who's going to make the call on Mrs. Jerry Manton?"

The shout that followed this question brought a protest from the next tent where candidates were studying manuals.

"Let's take a vote on it," suggested Thistle, when quiet seemed possible. "Since every one wants to go and we haven't heard the Mantons were going to give a picnic or anything like that--why--the best thing to do is to draw lots."

"How tragic! Draw lots! I say we make it numbers from Doro's cap. Here girls, get busy and numb."

A page of note paper was quickly numbered and torn into squares. Then the lot was tossed into Doro's cap--it was the deepest for the little girl did not wear her hair bobbed. When the cap was filled she was the one chosen to hold it, and upon the highest chair she presently stood while the girls jumped for numbers. The four highest were to const.i.tute the committee and the lot fell to Betta, Pell, Wyn and Thistle.

It was arranged that these four should go in the morning to call upon Mrs. Jerry Manton, their good friend and erstwhile preceptor in woodlore, and it was fully expected that the young visitor would then naturally be introduced.

And this was the very day that Nora donned her new service suit.

CHAPTER IX

A MISADVENTURE

The idea of meeting a prince (the girls easily believed the pretty boy in the velvet suit was at least a near-prince) brought to the Chickadees a delicious thrill.

"You know," reasoned Thistle next morning, "the Manton's are government people, and there are lots of foreign n.o.bles down at Washington."

"That's so," agreed Doro. "He might have come up to the woods for his health."

The tent was quickly made ready for inspection and when the woodcraft cla.s.s was dismissed, the girls were free to make the all-important call.

It was but a short distance from Camp Chickadee to the Nest, and the four girls, const.i.tuting the committee, covered the ground speedily.

Vita answered the knock and told Pell, who was spokeswoman, that: "Mrs.

Manton no come back yet."

Nora not only heard the voices but she had seen the girls coming, and feeling that she, as a member of the family, should "do the honors," she summoned courage to greet the callers.