REACHING THE GOAL
The Easter holidays brought Joanne many pleasures, but none greater
than the day she spent at Chevy Chase, which gave her the opportunity
of a long and intimate talk with Mrs. Marriott.
“It is more than a year since we met,” said Joanne regarding her friend
with loving eyes, “and I do hope you see some improvement in me.”
“I certainly do,” was the rejoinder, “and if you have improved as much
inside as you have out, there is an immense gain.”
Joanne leaned her elbows on Mrs. Marriott’s lap and looked up at her
candidly. “I hate to think of what a horrid little minx I was, going
all to pieces over the slightest thing, crying like a baby when I
couldn’t have my own way, contradicting Gradda, and lashing around like
a wildcat when she brought me to task. I don’t see how you stood me.”
“Perhaps I didn’t see all those things.”
“Oh, no doubt I didn’t show you the ugly side, and that was being
double-faced, wasn’t it?”
“Not altogether. I think your eyes weren’t opened to some things which
you have learned since. That is the way it goes all through life. Every
now and then we turn a page and perceive some bit of knowledge which
has not been revealed to us before, then we wonder why our perceptions
have been so blunted to a fact which suddenly seems perfectly clear to
us. I think we keep on learning to the very day of our death.”
Joanne laid her cheek against her friend’s hand. “I hope that is true,
for I realize I have a lot to learn. The more I do learn the more I
discover how ignorant I am, and a year ago I rather prided myself upon
being quite a clever somebody, just because I had travelled a little
and knew a smattering of one or two languages. I certainly was a
sillybilly. I despise conceited people.”
Mrs. Marriott smiled. “When did you begin to learn all this wisdom?”
Joanne reflected for a moment. “I think I began with Bob. When he
told me about the girls he knew and all they could do, I felt I was
a po’ ignorant creetur, as Unc’ Aaron would say. Then when I started
at school I found that younger girls were away ahead of me in certain
studies, and when I tried to keep up with my classes and got all mixed
up, sometimes I would cry my eyes out because I found I wasn’t up to
the mark. I had a pretty hard time at first. Gradda would sympathize
with me and try to keep me from school when I got down in the dumps,
but Winnie would pull me up with a jerk. She gave me credit for the way
I worked, but she made fun of me for being such a baby, and that was
exactly what I needed.”
“Nothing better than ridicule to cure that sort of weakness; in fact,
for other sorts, too.”
“Is that what you did to make Bob so manly?”
“In a measure, yes.”
“I think Bob is the least conceited boy I ever saw. Just see how he
played at the concert; not a bit as if he were doing a big thing, but
just because it seemed to him a matter of duty, and he meant to do his
best. I wish I had a brother like Bob.”
“You’ll have to adopt him as your brother; he has no sister, you see.”
“Then you would be a sort of mother, wouldn’t you? I’d love that. I
am an only child, just as Bob is, and I do get lonely sometimes, or
rather, I used to more than I do now since I have become a Girl Scout,
for you know a Girl Scout is sister to every other Girl Scout. I
comfort myself thinking that. That’s another thing to thank you for.
If it hadn’t been for you I might have missed my dear Sunflower Troop
altogether, and it is such a joy.”
“It is a joy to me to know that it is a joy to you. Miss Dodge tells me
you have forged right ahead with your tests and that you are hoping to
become a Golden Eaglet. I think that is splendid.”
Joanne looked down and sighed. “I suppose I was insufferably conceited
to say that I would win all my tests in a year. I heard of a girl who
did, and I was ambitious to do the same, but I haven’t done it. I knew
I would fall down on some of the tests, those for the clerk badge for
instance. I needn’t tell you that I write an execrable hand and that I
can’t spell without a dictionary at my elbow.”
“But you can learn, of course you can.”
“It is the one thing that staggers me. I haven’t a bit of sense about
it. I began to work hard at it, but it bored me so I stopped.”
“You may tell yourself that what you need is application and
perseverance. Other things are easy to conquer, and you get impatient
when you find this isn’t. All the more you must make up your mind that
you will succeed. Will you make me a promise?”
“I’ll promise you anything.”
“Then promise me that you will give ten minutes a day to the one thing
and ten to the other. I don’t mean ten minutes of scribbling, but of
careful and exact following of some copy, and the same care to the
spelling. It might be a good thing to combine the two; that is, to
write the words you want to learn to spell. There are certain rules you
can learn; they would be very helpful, but you mustn’t learn them like
a parrot, but thoughtfully and intelligently.”
“Would it please you if I did that?”
“It would please me greatly if my adopted daughter were to show me that
she hasn’t a flibberty-gibbet sort of mind, but a studious one. That
she can pin herself down to a subject if she chooses, and that she
doesn’t throw over a thing just because it requires concentration, or
because it doesn’t particularly interest her.”
Joanne gently lifted one of her friend’s hands and kissed it. “Now I
know why Bob is so fine,” she said. “I don’t intend my adopted mother
and brother shall be ashamed of me, and I promise faithfully to do my
best. I did begin to try, but I got tired and slacked off, but I don’t
mean ever to be called a slacker again.”
“Dear little girl,” Mrs. Marriott bent over and kissed her, “I am proud
of you.”
“And I love you more than ever. Please tell me what I may call you.
Girls don’t call even their adopted mothers Mrs.; and I like to have
special names for persons I love.”
“What would you like to call me?”
Joanne considered this question very seriously. Finally she said:
“Would you mind if I called you Muvvie? I used to call my own mother
muvver, and it would be something like that; besides it rhymes with
lovey, and in my mind I can say dear Muvvie lovey, when I am thinking
of you at night.”
Mrs. Marriott answered with a smile though there were tears in her eyes
as she said: “I think you are a dear to want to call me that, and I
shall be delighted if you will.”
“And please don’t call me Dotty, for it will make me think you believe
I am very silly. You might say Doppy; that will be short for adopted,
and just we, ourselves, will understand. Do you know what I call Bob to
myself? I call him Robin, because he is so strong and cheerful, and
whistles so clearly and happily.”
“I think that is a very nice name for him. Here he comes now with Jack.
We have had a very nice talk, haven’t we? Yet there are many things
left over for another time. Shall I tell Bob he has an adopted sister?”
“Not now; some time when just we three are together.”
Mrs. Marriott smiled and nodded, thinking to herself: “Dear child, how
seriously she takes it.”
Then Bob and Jack came up, and presently Mrs. Barry joined them, and
the talk turned to those days when Mrs. Barry and Joanne’s mother were
girls together. Much as she loved her grandparents Joanne felt that her
life was greatly enriched by these new friends, especially when Mrs.
Barry whispered, as they were going out to lunch, “Please call me Aunt
Ellie. I don’t like to think that the daughter of my dear Anne Murray
means to treat me with formality.”
“I’d love to call you that,” Joanne whispered back. Therefore when she
left Chevy Chase that afternoon she felt herself much richer than when
she arrived there, for had she not an adopted mother, brother and aunt?
“You must come out very often,” said Mrs. Barry as she kissed her
good-bye.
“I shall love to,” returned Joanne enthusiastically, “and between times
please think up a lot of things to tell me about my mother. You know,
Aunt Ellie, I have so few relatives, for my father was an only child,
as I am, and my mother’s brothers and sisters all live in the far west.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to talk about dear Anne,”
Mrs. Barry assured her.
She went off feeling that Dame Fortune had been very kind to her. As
the car sped along between gardens where pink dogwood and white, lilac
and apple blooms gladdened the eye, where yellow and red tulips blazed
forth, Joanne inwardly gave thanks for friends and flowers. “It is a
beautiful world,” she said as she went into the library.
Her grandmother looked up and smiled a little absently, but her
grandfather held out his hand. “Come here and tell me about it,” he
said.
The Easter holidays over, Mrs. Marriott and Bob took their departure
but not before Bob had claimed Joanne as a sister and the two promised
to write regularly.
“You may find it hard to read my first letter,” acknowledged Joanne a
little ruefully. “I have such a horrid way of disconnecting my words,
so one doesn’t know where the letters belong, but I mean to have them
all joined up properly by this time next year, see if I don’t.”
“Go to it, sister,” said Bob. “I’ll bank on your coming out on top.”
But for the fact that school work began again after the holidays
Joanne would have missed the Marriotts, mother and son, sorely, but she
had little time for repining. She had never been able quite to catch up
with her class in mathematics and was giving extra time to this branch,
then, too, while she was now a First Class Scout, there was that goal
of Golden Eaglet ahead, and she was fired with new ambition to win it
before fall.
This year there was no reversal of Mrs. Selden’s decision to go to
Jamestown for the summer, so farewell to any hope of Joanne’s for
camping with her troop. To be sure Winnie, too, would be away up in
Maine for the season, and had asked Joanne to visit her. So far Mrs.
Selden had not favored the idea, but Joanne was not urging it, hoping
that her grandmother might be brought around in course of time. In
spite of prospects not altogether happy, however, Joanne was not
looking forward this year with the same discontent which had marked the
previous year. Weeping because things did not go her way was not to be
thought of in a girl now in her sixteenth year.
“I would be thoroughly ashamed of myself if I went all to pieces,” she
confided to Claudia. “I think, too, Gradda is beginning to respect my
years. She speaks of sixteen as quite a grown-up age. She was beginning
to have beaux herself when she was seventeen, and her mother was
married at that age.”
“But you are not beginning to want beaux, are you?” asked Claudia
slyly.
Joanne stared. “I? Heavens, no. I like my boy friends, but I should
want to escape into the wilderness if any one suggested that any one of
them was getting sentimental. Don’t say such things, Clausie; it gives
me the cold shivers.”
Claudia laughed. “I’m not suggesting anything, bless your heart; I was
only probing to learn where you stood. I feel just as you do.”
“Grad still treats me as if I were an infant,” Joanne went on, “but he
takes more interest in my doings. He’s different, you see. Gradda likes
to talk about clothes and fancy work and society doings, but she is
bored to extinction when I talk about Girl Scout stunts. She is a dear
old-fashioned thing, but she isn’t exactly congenial. Speaking of Girl
Scouts, Clausie, I’m getting awfully discouraged about ever being a
Golden Eaglet.”
“Why?”
“Well, I seem to have come just so far and there I stick.”
“How many tests have you still to make?”
“Three or four.”
“Why don’t you work on those during the summer? You’ll have a chance,
won’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. I have a lot of required reading, but that won’t
take all my spare time, and I did want to make a stride in math. Grad
can help me, so I won’t seem such a stupid when I come back in the
fall. Miss Dodge told me she was afraid I couldn’t pass up with the
class, but that if I chose to study for it I could take another exam.
in the fall.”
“Did you know Miss Dodge was not to come back next year?”
“No, I did not. Oh, Clausie, what will we do for a captain of our
troop?”
“I don’t know. Miss Dodge said she would see to it that we had a good
one.”
“Miss Chesney?”
“I hardly think so. She thinks she is too young to take the
responsibility.”
“Oh, dear, when things are going along so pleasantly why do we have to
have changes?”
“That’s what I said to my mother, and she said that change was about
the only thing we could count on in this world.”
Joanne considered this for a moment before she said: “There have been a
lot of changes in my life within the past two years, but all have been
for the better. I don’t see how it can be so in Miss Dodge’s case, but
perhaps it will. Who knows?”
“That is the way we should look at it, of course, though I must say I
hate to have any one take Miss Dodge’s place. She is a fine captain and
a fine teacher. It is just because of that she is going away. She has a
splendid offer in another city, and feels that she must take it.”
Soon after this conversation the summer holidays began and Joanne was
whirled off to Jamestown. The visit to Winnie did not materialize, but
the summer was not without profit, for Joanne did most of her required
reading, kept steadily to her decision of giving an hour a day to her
mathematics, and under her grandfather’s tutelage progressed so far
that she was satisfied that she could pass her examination without any
trouble. Beyond this, she made great improvement in a direction which
gave her more satisfaction than anything else, for she worked hard to
better her writing and spelling. She wrote to Bob and his mother on
alternate weeks, and this encouragement did much to keep alive her
ambition. When she became too greatly absorbed in what she was saying,
her words still had a fashion of falling apart, but when she took pains
they never did. With her grandfather as teacher, she learned, too, to
do all those things necessary for gaining her boatswain badge, to row,
pole and steer a boat, to land it and make it fast, to tell directions
by sun and stars, to swim with her clothes on, to box a compass and
have a knowledge of tides. She certainly could not have had a better
instructor, and the two became great comrades.
“I never expected that child to be such a comfort as she is,” said Dr.
Selden to his wife one day. “She takes to the water like a duck and is
learning to do all those things I taught her father.”
“Well, you have worked hard enough to make her learn,” replied his wife.
“Worked? Why, it has been the greatest fun imaginable. No boy could
have been more companionable.”
Mrs. Selden raised her eyebrows. “That’s just the trouble; you want her
to be like a boy, while I want her to be a young lady.”
“Oh, but, my dear, look at the child. She is the picture of health, and
when have you seen her fly into one of those tantrums she used to have
about every other day?”
“She is not perfect yet,” responded Mrs. Selden.
“Thank goodness she isn’t. Who is? I should be sorry to have her turn
into an angel yet a while. I want to keep her on earth while I am here.”
So between a grandfather who encouraged her to be a boy and a
grandmother who wished her to be a young lady, Joanne managed to remain
a nice, healthy, sensible girl, by no means angelic, yet with fewer
faults than might have seemed possible a few years before.
October saw her back in Washington prepared to take her last test for
the crowning honor conferred upon a Golden Eaglet. She passed her tests
successfully and was in a state of exaltation when the day arrived
upon which she should receive her badge. As it was upon the eve of
Miss Dodge’s departure from the city that her last meeting with the
Sunflower Troop should take place, the girls all flocked to the rally,
full of regrets at losing their captain yet curious to know who would
take her place. There were two surprises in store for Joanne, of
which, as yet, she had not the slightest inkling.
It was a more than usually serious group of girls who saluted their
captain. Winnie, who had served her term as patrol leader, stood next
to Joanne in the horseshoe line. The ceremony of saluting the flag, of
pledging allegiance, of inspection being over, the girls broke ranks
and the business meeting was held. After this Miss Dodge gave the order
to “Fall in.” There was silence while she looked over the company of
sixteen girls who faced her with grave faces.
Miss Dodge broke the silence by saying, “Girls, I wanted to have you
all to myself before your new captain arrives, which will be in a few
minutes. Most of you have met her and I am sure you will congratulate
yourselves when you see who she is. For myself I want to say that I
shall never forget the happy days we have had together. I shall follow
the career of each one of you with the greatest interest, and I hope
that your new captain will be as proud of you as I am, that she will
love you as much as I do, and that you will be loving and faithful to
her and to your troop.”
By this time most of the girls were in tears, Joanne among them. But
presently she saw, as through a blurred mist, two or three persons
entering the room. Suddenly she dashed away her tears and breathed an
ecstatic exclamation of: “Oh!” She clutched Winnie’s arm and whispered:
“Do you suppose----? Could it be----?”
She stopped short, for Miss Dodge was speaking. “Dear girls,” she said,
“you will be happy and proud when I tell you that your new captain
is to be Mrs. Marriott, whom some of you know by her stage name of
Madame Risteau. I am rejoiced that she has consented to take my place,
for while I am leaving the city she is coming here to live. Sunflower
Troop, salute your captain.”
Every hand went up in salute, and Joanne’s tears melted away into
smiles. Of course she was sorry to lose Miss Dodge, but to have her
place taken by this dear friend more than outweighed her regrets. She
longed to throw herself into her new captain’s arms, but had to be
satisfied with an eloquent smile in her direction.
Miss Dodge and Mrs. Marriott conferred together for a few minutes, then
Miss Dodge spoke again. “I am glad that it will be Mrs. Marriott’s
first privilege, as captain, to bestow the honor of Golden Eaglet on
two of the troop, Winifred Merryman and Joanne Selden.”
The two girls went up to receive their badges, Joanne’s heart beating
high as Mrs. Marriott, looking down at her with very loving eyes,
pinned on her badge of honor.
When the meeting was over Joanne could scarcely wait to fly to her
“Muvvie,” though she did linger long enough to give Winnie a little
shake and cry, “Oh, Win, you never told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you had taken all your tests and would become a Golden Eaglet
when I did.”
Winnie laughed. “I wanted to surprise you, but I got the surprise of my
life when I learned who the new captain was to be.”
“Aren’t you glad?”
“Of course I am. If we had to have a new captain I think we are mighty
lucky to have her.”
Then, while the other girls were crowding around Miss Dodge to make
their farewells, she went to give her dear friend welcome. “It is so
wonderful, so wonderful!” she murmured. “Like a dream. I can’t believe
that you and Bob are to be right here in Washington. Tell me how it
happened and why I have not known it before.”
“It happened very suddenly. My husband found that business interests
would take him down this way, and that probably we must be here for
some years, so we decided to settle it at once. I wrote to Mrs. Barry
and by good fortune found we could get a house near her if we took it
immediately, so we took it ‘on sight unseen’ and here we are. In the
meantime Mrs. Barry had been talking to Miss Dodge, who is a great
friend of hers, and both of them so besought me to take Miss Dodge’s
place as captain of your troop, that I finally consented to do so, for
a time at least, so there you are.”
Joanne gave a long sigh of content. “And to think it was you, of all
persons that I could have chosen, who pinned on my dear Golden Eaglet
badge.”
“I am very proud of my daughter,” said Mrs. Marriott squeezing the hand
she held.
Then it was time to leave and Joanne went home to give her news to her
family and to find them interested in all she had to tell.
Of what went on after this it would take too long to tell, of the hikes
and picnic suppers, the week ends at the lodge, of how Pablo continued
a faithful helper at the farm, and how Unc’ Aaron found a bee tree for
the Boy Scouts, of how Mrs. Marriott entertained the girls in her new
home, all these and other things would take another book, but as Girl
Scouts all over the world are doing these and similar things, each one
can turn to her own happy experiences and believe they were duplicated
by Joanne and her friends.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.