On Saturday morning Joy woke up at sunrise.
No one else was awake yet.
She quietly pulled on her clothes and tiptoed downstairs.
Last night she had made a to-do list.
Today she was determined to finish everything on it.
Her boots crunched on the icy grass as she walked into the yard.
"One, two, three, four, five."
Joy counted the chickens that were waddling around nearby.
One was still missing.
"Poor things," she said, noticing that their water feeder had frozen over.
She went to look for a stick to break up the ice.
Then Joy spotted something in the garden.
"Hey! What are you doing over there?"
It was the missing chicken!
Joy ran over and scooped up the chicken.
"Good thing you're alive," she said, patting its head.
"It's dangerous to escape, you know."
Joy put the chicken back in the coop.
But she still had a mystery to solve.
"How in the world did you get out?"
She circled the fence, looking for a hole, but didn't find anything.
Soon she heard Katie calling her for breakfast.
While she ate, Joy told Mom and Katie about how she'd found the chicken.
"Now I have to figure out how it escaped.
But first I'm going to work on my leader project.
Can I borrow your computer, Mom?"
"Of course," Mom said.
"Oh, and I'll need all your cotton balls and some shoe polish, Mom," Katie announced.
Mom stared at Katie.
"What on earth for?" she asked.
"I'm going to make an Abraham Lincoln beard," said Katie.
"To wear for my presentation on Monday."
Mom laughed. "I can't wait to see that!"
After breakfast the girls got to work.
Katie sat on the kitchen floor to make her beard.
Joy stayed at the table, reading about leaders on the Internet.
Magoo sat by Joy's feet, sniffing at Katie's shoe polish.
"Hey, Katie, what do you know about Harriet Tubman?" Joy asked.
Katie put down a cotton ball.
"Nothing. I've never heard of her! Who is she?"
"She was a slave, back when there were slaves in America.
And she was really smart.
So she escaped to freedom.
Then she helped other slaves escape too.
She risked her life helping them travel north, all the way to Pennsylvania and Canada!" explained Joy.
"She sounds brave," Katie said.
"She was," Joy said.
"She even worked for the Union army during the Civil War."
Katie smiled. "Hey! I wonder if she ever met Abraham Lincoln!"
She held up a few dyed cotton balls to her chin.
"Hello, Harriet," she said in her best Abraham Lincoln voice.
"Would you like to fight for the Union army?"
"I'm not a soldier, President Lincoln!
I'm a spy!" Joy cried.
The girls burst into giggles.
Just then the phone rang.
"I'll get it!" Katie jumped up.
"Hi, Olivia," she said. "No, I'm not doing anything."
Joy raised her eyebrows at Katie's mess on the floor.
Sometimes it was amazing how different she and her sister were.
"YES," Katie said loudly.
"Of course I want to practice ice skating turns!"
She hung up the phone and tapped Joy's shoulder.
"Put your books away.
Olivia's coming over.
We're going ice skating," she said.
"Magoo, stop it!"
Katie reached down and pulled a cotton ball from Magoo's mouth.
Joy glanced outside.
She wanted to practice ice skating turns with Olivia and Katie.
But it wasn't on her to-do list.
And she had finally gotten a great idea for her project.
Joy cleared her throat.
"I can't," she said.
"I've got a Harriet Tubman project to do!"