d. "Do you notice the house right at the edge of this green? Do you
see how it's right in a bee-line with that tree? We've got to go right
through that house. Do you think we'd go around it? We'll go right plunk
through the middle of it, no matter what. That's what a bee-line hike
means. That's why we had the police department come to us instead of our
going to him. See?"

All the girls began to laugh. Dora Dane Daring said, "Isn't that just
wonderful?"

"That's nothing," Pee-wee said. "We do harder things than that."

They all began to laugh again.

I said, "Well, as long as we can't take this village with us we'll have
to leave it here, I suppose. I hope it will be here when we get back."

"Maybe if you bound it with ropes----" one of those girls said.

"It would just be a waste of good rope," I said. "We'll stand a rock on
the town and that will hold it here. Come on, official staff," I said,
"get busy. You fellows fall into line. The next assault is on that house
that Pee-wee pointed out. Am I right?"

They all lined it up with the tree so as to make sure.

"Now you watch us," I said to the girls.

"Oh, we'll watch you," one of them said. Then they all began to laugh
again.

I said, "If you have patrols in the Girl Scouts, yours ought to be
called the Laughing Hyenas. What's the idea?"

They didn't answer, only just stood there giggling. They ought to have a
merit badge for giggling in the Girl Scouts.

"We think you're so funny," one of them said; "especially that little
boy."

"Your village isn't so big if it comes to that," Pee-wee said.

"No, but it hasn't got coffee-pots and frying pans and old phonographs
hanging all over it," one of them said, laughing all the while. "He
looks like an ash wagon."

"That shows how much you know about scouting," the kid shouted. "Don't
you know that scouts are supposed to cook their own meals?"

"And play their own music?" Dora Dane Daring said. "Do you take victrola
lessons?"

I said, "He plays the shoe horn, also the gas pipe. He can even play on
_Boys' Life_; that's the scouts' official organ."

She said, "_Most_ canary birds are musical."

"Yes," I said, "and parrots can laugh, too."

She said, "You ought to call it an A. B. C. hike instead of a B hike. If
you're going to tear down any houses we'd like to see you do it."

"Everybody falls for the scouts--in all the houses," Pee-wee yelled.

That Daring girl just giggled and said, "Oh, isn't that j