course, the girls will have to be all that and still more. Could I?

I sat still and thought for a long time, and Tony, with his knowledge
of girls, let me do it. Could I? Could a girl with a father that might
have done the thing that my father is suspected of having done to a
fellow-man, promise to be all or any of those things? How would she
know that some little thing in her, like her father, wouldn't come up,
just at the time when she was being depended on, to make her fail?
This distinction was not for me!

"Tony," I said quietly, and I didn't let the tremble in my heart get
into my voice at all, "whatever happens to me in my life I can't ever
forget that you offered to make me the leader of the Campfire, but--I
can't be it. Please don't make me say any more about it. I can't."

Tony understood. "Not a word more on the subject, Bubble; but I do
want to say that you are one fine--"

But just here we were interrupted by Mamie Sue coming lumbering across
the wall from the Byrd cottage, for Tony and I had been sitting on a
bench out under the blooming peach-tree arbor. She sat pretty close to
me and gave me a nice, good, fat-armed hug as she offered me a paper
bag.

"Have some fudge, Phyllis," was all she said; but I saw Belle walking
down the street with her head in the air and her skirts switching like
Helena's and I knew that Mamie Sue had come through a hard fight to be
friends with me. I can't say how I appreciated it, and I love Mamie
Sue. Maybe she is not very smart, but a person that always has
sweetness of disposition and in paper bags to offer a friend in
trouble ought to be appreciated. And just as I had got hold of her
nice big right arm to return the hug, around the other side of the
house came Pink and Sam, with Miss Priscilla in between them.

"Phyllis dear," said Miss Prissy, as all of us got up to give her a
seat, though she only took Tony's and part of mine, while the boys sat
on the grass, "the boys are telling me about the Girl Scout ideas. I
think it is naughty of them to say they are going to name you the
Kitten Patrol, especially as your rescue of Lovey Byrd is more than
likely to give you a life-saving medal to start with, as soon as the
Colonel writes to New York about it."

"A medal--a--a medal like Tony's?" I gasped, as my heart stood still
in awe of my own act.

"Why, of course, Bubble, you will get a medal," said Tony, with the
delight that some boys might not have shown at the id