Nathalie came running up the steps of the veranda her brown eyes alight with excitement as she cried, “Oh, Mother, what do you think? Down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn is a nest of tiny blue robins—they’re just the cutest things—do come and see them!”

“Blue robins?” quizzed her brother Dick from where he lay reading in the hammock. “Who ever heard of blue robins?”

“I think she means bluebirds,” ventured Mrs. Page, looking up from the morning paper and smiling at the earnest young face of her daughter. Then her eyes dimmed, but she winked her lashes quickly as if to restrain a sudden rush of tears, rose in answer to the note of appeal in the girl’s voice, and stepped to her side.

A moment later they were strolling across the new-grown grass of the lawn, the girl of sixteen supporting the slender, black-gowned figure of her mother, whose delicate, high-bred face with its impress of recent sorrow defined the youthful glow of the one that smiled upon her so tenderly.

“Now, Mumsie, look!” whispered the girl as she pointed to a dark cavity in the trunk of the cedar but a short distance from the ground; “see, are they not robins?”

Mrs. Page’s tired eyes brightened as she watched with keen interest the five bobbing heads with open bills, turweeing in hungry clamor, “Why no, Nathalie,” she replied laughingly, “they are bluebirds.”

At this instant they spied the mother bird as she flitted excitedly among the upper branches of the tree. Drawing her mother to one side, Nathalie whispered tensely, “Oh, there’s the mother bird—she wants to feed them! Let’s see what she will do!” Nathalie’s eyes sparkled expectantly.

It was quite evident what Mrs. Bluebird was going to do, for she immediately jumped to the edge of the nest and dropped a fat, squirming worm into an open bill. As she poised over her nestlings she caught sight of the two figures under the tree. In another instant she had set up such a vigorous scolding that the interlopers were quite disturbed. Seeing, however, that they did not offer to molest her little ones, Mrs. Birdie finally subsided, cocked her head perkily on one side, and watched them with eyes that shone like two fireflies.

Father bird now came flying up with another good-sized wriggler in his beak, which mother bird, with an eye to business, hastily snatched and dropped into a wide-open bill.

“Why, Mother,” commented Nathalie, “do you see that the father bird is much the handsomer of the two, for he is of a deep blue color, while mother bird’s feathers are grayish-blue.”

Her mother nodded as she answered, “Yes, and his beautiful coat is in striking contrast to his throat and breast, which are reddish-brown.”

“And the white feathers below,” continued Nathalie, with keen eyes, “look like a white apron.”

“But come, dear,” interposed her mother, “we must go back, for I hear Dick whistling—he is getting impatient—I promised to get him a sofa pillow for the hammock.”

As they stepped on the veranda, Dick inquired, with sarcastic inflection, balancing himself on the edge of the hammock and pushing it to and fro with his crutch, “Well, how many blue robins did you find?”

“We found five tiny bluebirds,” responded his mother with unwonted animation as she seated herself in a low rocker, and then she continued in lower tone as her daughter disappeared in quest of the pillow, “Oh, Dick! I am so glad to see some color in Nathalie’s cheeks again, for she has been looking very wan and pale. The poor child has not only suffered the loss of her father, but she has had to give up so many things—the very things, too, that a girl of her age longs for so much!” Mrs. Page sighed drearily.

“Giving up college was the hardest,” added her son, his face expressing the sympathy he hardly knew how to voice; “but she’s a corker, for she has faced every disappointment like a little hero. I didn’t know she had so much pluck in her.”

“She takes after her father, he was always so cheerful about facing the inevitable—” His mother’s lips quivered; she paused as if to gain control of her voice and then resumed brokenly, “Oh, Dick, to think he has gone—it seems as if it could not be true—”

“True enough,” retorted Dick gruffly; and then he added, in a softer voice, “but after all, Mother, every one has to have trouble. We’re having ours just now—that’s all—and we’ve got to bear it. Things might have been worse, I suppose—we’ve got enough left to live on—oh, if it wasn’t for this confounded knee of mine—to be helpless when—”

“Hush, Dick, don’t say that,” cried his mother in a pained voice; “just have patience, and you will be all right; have patience with me, too, dear, because I am such a coward to allow myself to get so depressed.” She made a brave attempt at a smile. “It will be as you say, all right soon.”

Hearing Nathalie’s step, she hastily hid her tear-stained face behind the paper; then, as that young woman threw the sofa pillow at Dick’s head, she exclaimed, “I am so glad, Nathalie, to see you take an interest in the new home. I think it is a lovely—”

“Doll’s house!” interposed the girl laughingly. “But, O dear, I must be careful, for when I called it a doll’s house while Mrs. Morton was here she looked rather queer, and then I remembered that her house is not much bigger. But do you know, Mother,” she rattled on girlishly, “I think we are going to be quite comfy in this little home—after a time of course,” she hastened to add, “when we have become used to the change—and all—” she stopped abruptly, for she, too, was thinking of the dear father who had gone so suddenly—without even saying good-by, as she had so often wailed in the darkness of night—leaving Mother with only a meager income, and with poor Dick to take care of, and her and Dorothy, who didn’t know enough to earn a penny!

A sudden slam of the door was heard, a “How are you, Auntie?” in a sweet, assured voice, and then with smiling eyes a tall, graceful, young woman, with shiny, fluffy hair came forward and kissed her aunt caressingly.

“Oh, Lucille, what do you think?” broke from Nathalie impetuously; “I found a nest of tiny bluebirds down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn!”

“Um-m, well, you are always finding something to enthuse over,” remarked her cousin with careless indifference, “but I wish you would make that all-round maid of yours do my room, I want to write a letter.” There was spoiled impatience in the girl’s voice.

Mrs. Page looked up with a startled expression as she murmured apologetically, “Oh, I forgot, Lucille. I will do it—I thought—”

“No, no, Mother,” came from Nathalie hurriedly, as with heightened color and gentle insistence she forced her mother back to her seat. “I will do it.”

Nathalie disappeared within the door. She had smiled sweetly for her mother’s sake, but as she went up the stairs there was an upward lift to her chin that showed that she had a will and a temper of some weight. “Why is Lucille so mean,” she questioned mutinously, “as not to make her own bed when she knows that now we shall have to get along with only one maid? Mother is not going to wait on her!” Her eyes gleamed with angry decision, and then the curves of her mouth softened as she struggled silently with her jarring thoughts.

Yes, it must be borne, for was it not a part of the great change that had come into her life with her first great sorrow? The shock of her father’s death had dazed her, and she had suffered in a dulled, uncomprehending way until she was aroused from her grief by the many anxieties and disappointing changes that the financial tangle of her father’s affairs had caused.

Leaving their beautiful city home, giving up the many luxuries and the pleasures to which she had been accustomed, parting from her school friends, and coming to the unknown suburban town were bitter disappointments; the one that cut the deepest was giving up college, but the hardest to bear was Dick’s accident!

The next moment the girl was hard at work picking up Lucille’s disordered room, humming cheerily as she went about her task, for, after all, her cousin was independent—she paid her board—and now they would need every penny.

A resolute will and deft fingers can accomplish much in this workaday world, and so Nathalie soon finished her new job, as she called it, and sat on the veranda watching the robins as they hopped nimbly over the lawn, ducking their heads every minute or so to reappear with fat, dangling worms in their beaks.

Their cheerful twitter, the budding leaves on trees and bushes, and the many reminders of the revival of life under the warmth and glow of the spring sunshine thrilled her with exhilaration. Her depression vanished, she felt happy again, but vaguely perhaps, scarcely comprehending that the buoyancy of youth and the joy of life were compensations that dulled the harrowing edge of grief.

With a long breath, as if to capture as much as possible of the spring balminess, Nathalie turned to see her mother seated in the low chair, with her basket of mending, wearing the same dazed, worried look on her face that had haunted the girl ever since their sorrow. She became keenly aware that her tireless mother, who had always stood ready to do the thousand and one things that were constantly calling her, was failing. Something swelled up in her throat, she fought valiantly a moment, and then jumping up, she grabbed the half-darned sock from her mother’s hand, pitched it into the basket, picked it up and carried it over to her chair.

“Now, Mumsie,” she declared in answer to her mother’s startled look, “you are not to darn any more stockings; henceforth your humble servant is to be the champion mender.” Nathalie’s cheeks flushed, for as she raised her eyes she encountered those of a young girl about her own age who was just coming out of the adjoining house.

As her neighbor saw Nathalie, she smiled a cheery good-morning, showing a row of strong, white teeth, and then strode down the walk with the light step and easy swing of the athletic girl.

“Huh! what a queer rig,” commented Lucille, with a supercilious raising of her eyebrows, as she noted that the girl wore a short brown khaki skirt over bloomers, a middy with a Turkey red tie, and a broad-brimmed hat banded with red. “Is that the Salvation Army’s summer apparel?” Then seeing that the girl carried a strong staff in her hand, she added with a giggle, “Or perhaps she is some aspiring member of the militants.”

“Why, I think the uniform—for I presume it is that—” interposed Mrs. Page, “is very attractive, and most appropriate for a Girl Pioneer.”

“Why, Mother, how do you know she is a Girl Pioneer?” questioned Nathalie with mild amazement.

“Ah, I forgot to tell you that her mother, Mrs. Dame, called the day you were out walking. She told me that Helen, her only daughter, belongs to ‘The Girl Pioneers of America.’”

“The Girl Pioneers of America!” repeated her daughter; “why, I never heard of them. Is it a patriotic society?”

“In a way I presume it is,” returned her mother, “as it is an organization which trains girls to emulate the sterling qualities of the early pioneer women.”

“I wonder what they do, and if it is anything like the Boy Scouts!” continued Nathalie interestedly.

“I think from what Mrs. Dame told me that it must be a sister society to that organization, for its object is to awaken within the girls a desire for healthy, outdoor activities, as well as a broad and useful life along many lines. I am sure in these days, when girls are so shallow and artificial-looking, and have no higher thought than getting all the pleasure they can out of life, that it is something which is sadly needed.” Mrs. Page’s tones were expressive.

“Oh, Aunt Mary,” demurred Lucille, looking up with a frown from her novel, “one would think that you expected girls to dress and act like their grandmothers. I am sure one can be young but once, and if one doesn’t have a good time then, what’s the use of living? And for putting a little color on one’s face, why, the most fashionable people do it nowadays.”

Mrs. Page’s face flushed slightly, but she replied with quiet dignity, “I am surprised, Lucille, to hear you talk that way, brought up as you have been, too. It is true,” she continued, “that there is no harm in wanting a good time—as you call it—that is youth’s privilege, and no one wishes to turn youth into age, but back of it all there should be common sense and a desire for right living. As for putting artificial color on a face that should represent the freshness and the natural bloom of youth, why, to me it is demoralizing.”

Lucille frowned impatiently and resumed her reading.

“Mrs. Dame,” continued her aunt, turning towards Nathalie, “said her daughter Helen was coming in to call on you; she will probably give you all the information you want about the new organization. I hope you will like her, dear, for she seems a pleasant, well-bred girl and surely will prove companionable to you. We might as well, all of us, try to forget our city life with its past pleasures, and see if we cannot adapt ourselves to our surroundings.”

“Indeed I will try, Mumsie,” replied Nathalie with a slight catch in her voice, as her thoughts turned back to her chums in the city, and she wondered what they would think of her humble little home. “But really, Mother,” she spoke aloud, “I think Miss Dame has an awfully bright face, and I wish she would call, for I should like to know about the Girl Pioneers.”

A few days after the finding of the bluebird’s nest, Nathalie, enlivened by the desire to investigate her surroundings, and curious for new experiences, set forth on a little exploring tour to the woods on the outskirts of the town. She had tried to induce her cousin to join her, but that young lady was absorbed in running over a new ragtime song. Her sister Dorothy, aged twelve, had also declined on the score that she had an engagement with a girl neighbor who lived in the big house down the road.

Sunshine and youth are joy-bearers, and as Nathalie felt the air in fragrant little whiffs against her cheeks, she thrilled with pleasure as she strode briskly up the hill. A moment later, however, her shining eyes shadowed, and she unconsciously shivered as she encountered a cold glance from a lady, weirdly garbed in gray, who was just passing.

The color flashed to her cheeks; she felt as if some one had slapped her as the haunting vision of that uncanny stare of aversion from two steely-gray eyes penetrated her consciousness. Tempted by curiosity she turned and watched the peculiar-looking figure as it glided with almost specter-like swiftness down the hill.

“I wonder who she is and why she gave me such a harrowing glance,” thought Nathalie. “Whew! she has frozen me stiff,” and then a laugh brightened the brown eyes as she continued on her way. She had almost reached the top of the hill when she saw a large brown card on the walk. Picking it up she read, “Westport Library,” and then the written name, “Elizabeth Van Vorst.” Not a great loss, to be sure, but likely to cause inconvenience.

“Oh, I wonder if that lady didn’t drop it, she had a book under her arm,” flashed into the girl’s mind. She hesitated—she did not want to climb that long hill again—but the next second she had whirled about and was running lightly down the slope in the direction of a Carnegie building that glimmered picturesquely between green-boughed trees.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” panted Nathalie as she held out the card to the gray lady who had just emerged from the library and was looking vexedly about on the walk in front of the building, “did you not lose your library card?”

The lady turned sharply, stared suspiciously at the girl a moment, and then, as her eyes fell upon the extended card, exclaimed coldly, “Oh, did you find it? Thank you, I am much obliged!” With a haughty glance of dismissal she turned and ascended the library steps.

Nathalie’s eyes gleamed angrily, but with a toss of her head she was off on her second trudge up the slope. “Well, she is the limit—” she muttered. “Of all hateful, disagreeable, peculiar, mysterious creatures, she takes first rank.” But when the girl reached the woods where the new-gowned trees and the white blossoms of the dogwood, which she had spied the day before, riding in a trolley car, rustled softly in the sunlight, as if in a spring greeting to the flower-seeker, the unpleasant incident was forgotten.

With eager eyes and cheeks aglow she began to break off a sprig here and there, lingering only to caress the snowy petals that tantalizingly brushed her cheek.

“What a beauty!” she exclaimed as she suddenly halted; “it will be just the spray to sketch.” Up went her arm—a little higher—and then something went from under her; she tried to regain her footing, but slipped again on the moist turf. She felt her foot turn, and then came a sharp twinge that whitened her lips as she dropped, a helpless heap, on the ground.

For a few moments the girl forgot her dogwood blossoms, the slip, and the pain, and then she opened her eyes to realize, with a pang of dismay, that she must have fainted. Oh, she must have twisted her ankle, for when she tried to stand she almost screamed with the knife-like twinges.

She leaned her head against the tree with closed eyes, trying to think, but her thoughts seemed to run around in a circle, for she could see no way out of her dilemma. She was too far from the trolley line to hail a car, or to beckon to any passer-by who might be on the road.

She thought ruefully of how worried her mother would be if she did not return before dark. And who was there to look for her? Dick was helpless with his crutch, Dorothy would not be home until late, and Lucille—well, whoever heard of Lucille ever doing anything for any one but herself?

She screamed, but when her voice rang out with reverberating shrillness she clapped her hands to her ears. She would sing; and her fresh young voice broke forth into ragtime song.

But the ragtime quivered pathetically into a half-wail. What should she do? At last in sheer desperation she began to sing hymns; but they sounded so doleful in her nervous state that she desisted with a sound that was half a sob and half a laugh. She was about to embrace resignation to fate when she caught the glimmer of a brown skirt between the low-hung branches of the trees near by. In a moment there was a sharp crack of a twig, and Nathalie with a sudden exclamation of joy saw a young girl coming quickly toward her, wearing the same kind of a brown uniform she had perceived on her neighbor a few days ago.

“Oh, are you hurt?” asked the girl quickly, as she saw Nathalie’s white face resting against the tree.

Nathalie, attempting to smile, told of her mishap, and then with widening eyes saw the girl run a few steps into the open. Then the short, staccato whistle of Bob White struck the air.

It was hardly a moment when, in response to this bird-call, several girls appeared in the opening beyond. A few hurried words with the girl who had signaled them, and they were around Nathalie, listening to the story of her accident.

After expressing their sympathy, two of the taller girls quickly slipped off their khaki skirts, unbuttoned them, and then, to the injured one’s amazement, one of the girls pushed her staff through the belt of one skirt and hem of the other, while her companion did the same with her staff. They were improvising a stretcher, as neat and comfortable-looking as if it had just been removed from an ambulance.

While the stretcher was being made, one of the girls had taken from her knapsack a small black case from which she extracted a bottle. Hastily kneeling on the ground, after Nathalie’s boot had been removed by her assistant, she bathed the injured foot, then, as her companion handed her a roll of white lint she bound it with a cotton compress, while Nathalie, with much curiosity, watched her as she quickly and skillfully performed the work of First Aid to the Injured. As she rose to her feet and turned to direct her companions in the lifting of her patient on the stretcher, Nathalie recognized her next-door neighbor, Helen Dame, the Girl Pioneer!