The Girl Scouts at Bellaire; Or Maid Mary's Awakening

While we leave the chums to their plans for the vacation at Bellaire, which is to be much more than a vacation in its exploits, experiences, and adventures, we may renew our acquaintance with these same girls met in the first volume of the series: "The Girl Scout Pioneers; or, Winning the First B. C." As told in this story it was through the mill town of Pennsylvania, known as Flosstown, because of its noted silk industries, that the True Tred Troop of Girl Scouts found scouting a delightful means of getting in touch with girls in the mills, whose characteristics and peculiar foreign traits stamped them as picturesque, novel and fascinating. Tessie and Dagmar, two girls of the Fluffdown Mills, decide to break away from their surroundings and do actually run away, falling into the "hands of the police," in a most peculiar way.

Dagmar is housed in a novel jail, while Tessie is "at large" still, trying to make her way to the beckoning city, with its alleged thrills and glories. After disastrous experiences Tessie obtains employment in the home of the fairy-like Jacqueline Douglass, and through the jolly scouting of Cleo, Grace and Madaline (the trio who tied a man to a tree in River Bend Woods) the runaway girls are finally brought together at a Fairy-Fantasy in the wildwoods, all secretly planned by Jacqueline. The identity of the man who was the "victim of scouts" is finally disclosed, and the mystery is eventually unraveled. A hidden deed, worthy of particular merit, was privately marked to the credit of Cleo, who had risked her life to save that of another girl, and, in doing so, had promised herself no one would know of the adventure. But for this she is finally awarded the Bronze Cross, much to her own and her companions' surprise.

The story has a purpose, and to both the American girls and those of foreign extraction it shows the value of such safe and sane agencies as the Girl Scouts, while the book is absorbing in its plot, quite irrespective of the Scout detail.

And now the three girls of True Tred Troop are deciding to shed their drills and meetings, while seeking adventure in the pretty town of Bellaire, nestled against the New Jersey mountains. Madaline had furnished the note books, while she and her companions were furnishing the notes.

"There," decided Cleo, jerking her head to one side in the bird-like way that had earned for her the name of Perky, "if we carry all these plans out we will surely have a wonderfully neat trip. I want it to be neat, and I positively protest against bananas, oranges, or other slushy fruit en route. When we want to eat à la carte we must dismount. Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if our car should break down, and we would have to finish our journey on muleback!"