One more sharp turn brought the girl within sight of a square, squatty railroad station, and as she sped toward it she caught sight of the figure of another girl, outlined in the shadows.  This figure was taller and larger in form than herself, and as Dagmar whistled softly, the girl ahead stopped.

“Oh, you got my note,” said the other.  “I am so glad.  I was afraid you would not come.”

“I’m here,” replied Dagmar, “bag and baggage, mostly bag,” kicking the accommodating and inoffensive telescope.  “I hate to carry this thing.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” replied the taller girl, who, under a street lamp, showed a face older than Dagmar’s and perhaps a little hard and rough.  Just that bold defiant look, so often affected by girls accustomed to fighting their way through the everyday hardships of walled-in surroundings.

“Tessie, I am afraid,” confessed the younger girl.  “I almost cried when Mama asked me to fix supper.”

“Oh, baby!  You are too pretty, that’s all’s the matter with you.  But just wait.  Hush!  There’s that crowd of nifty-nice, preachy, snippy scout girls.  Duck, or they’ll be on our trail,” and she dragged her companion around the corner of the high fence, where, in the shadow of its bill-posted height they crouched, until the laughing, happy girls of True Tred Troop, just out from their early evening meeting at Sunset Hall, over the post-office, had passed down into Elm Street.

“I think they saw us,” whispered Dagmar, “I heard one girl say some one was hiding by the signboard.”

“We should worry,” flippantly replied Tessie.  “I guess they are too busy thinking about their old wigwagging to notice mill girls.”

“Oh, you’re mean, Tessie.  I think they are real nice.  They always say hello to me.”

“That’s because you are pretty,” snubbed the older girl, with something like common spite in her voice.

“Here they come back!  Guess they lost something.”

“We’d better be moving the other way, then.  Pshaw!  We will sure be late if they keep up their trailing around.  Come along.  Just be so busy talking to me they won’t get a chance to give you their lovely hello.  It would be all up with us if they spied us.”  With a persuasion not entirely welcome to Dagmar, Tessie again dragged her along, this time turning away from the dim lights that showed through the window of Flosston station.

Presently the group of scout girls could be heard exchanging opinions on the possibility of finding something lost.  One thought it might have dropped in the deep gutter, another declared she would have heard it fall if it hit the many stones along the sidewalk, and still another expressed the view that it would be impossible to find it until daylight, no matter where it had fallen.

“But I just got it, and wanted to wear it so much,” wailed the girl most concerned.  “I think it is too mean—­”

“Now, we will be sure to find it in daylight,” assured the tall girl, evidently the captain.  “I will be around here before even the mill hands pass.  Don’t worry, Margaret.  If we don’t find it, I shall send to headquarters for another.”