So immediately afterwards three parties set out, leaving Edith Norton
and Juliet Field behind to protect the camp and to announce by the
ringing of a bell if Polly should return or if they were in any need.
Betty, Sylvia and Esther went off in one direction, Miss McMurtry and
the two younger girls, Nan and Beatrice, in another, while Mollie, Meg
and Eleanor took the interior of the Webster farm. The chief obstacle
in their search being that it was apparently impossible to discover the
direction of Polly's footprints on first leaving camp, the grass in the
neighborhood being so constantly trodden down by the feet of so many
girls.
Billy Webster, as he preferred to be called, was in a wheat field with
his reaper just about to start to work, when a Camp Fire girl, whether
Mollie or Polly he could not tell at first, came running toward him in
apparent distress. So as not to make another mistake he let the girl
speak first, only smiling at her in a sufficiently friendly fashion to
make it very simple.
Mollie's first words were luminous. "Have you seen anything of Polly?
She is lost or gone away or at least we can't find her!"
Therefore until lunch time Billy kept up the search over the farm with
the three girls. And though they were not successful in making any
discovery it was surprising what a comfort the girls found him,
particularly Mollie, who seemed to depend on him as though he had been
an old friend.
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