“Well, anyhow, it’s coming after us, whatever it is,” added Margie. “Come on! Run fast!”

“Oh, why doesn’t somebody help us?”39 cried Lucy. “Go on back, you old scarecrow you!” she shouted.

39

“It isn’t a scarecrow, whatever else it is,” said Margie.

“I know it isn’t,” Lucy admitted. “But I couldn’t think of anything else to call it. Oh, goodie! Here’s the fence. Now we can crawl under and be safe.”

The girls reached a fence at one corner of Mason’s meadow and lost no time in crawling below the first rail. They pushed their brothers’ airplanes through the fence ahead of them.

The grass was long and green at the place where Margie and Lucy had crawled under the fence. And, noting as they were on their hands and knees, that the grass was above their heads, Margie said:

“Why not stay here?”

“Stay here?” exclaimed Lucy.

“Yes. We can hide here in the long grass until that animal has gone away. It can’t see us if we hide in the grass.”

40 Lucy thought that was a fine idea. So the girls stretched out in the fragrant clover and timothy grass that would soon be hay. It was quiet and restful there and they felt sure the animal that had frightened them could not see them.

40

“But I wish the boys would come,” said Margie.

“Maybe they will,” added Lucy.

Teddy Benson and his two chums lost no time hurrying out of the woods after they had found Teddy’s lost plane. The frightened cries of the girls hastened their steps.

“That was Margie’s voice,” decided Dick. “My sister always yells that way when she’s frightened.”

“So does Lucy,” said Teddy.

“But what could have frightened them?” asked Joe Denton. “The voices sounded as if they came from the meadow. And we crossed the meadow a little while ago and there was nothing there.”

41 “Unless it was that 

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