“You remember us?” laughed Roy.
“I should think I did, but you’re the last persons I ever expected to see. Isn’t it lovely, your coming again—just as if you had dropped from the clouds!”
“We’d have been some shower, wouldn’t we?” laughed Roy.
“Oh, I think it’s fine,” she repeated; “and you’ve got to stay to supper. We’re going to have popovers—do you like popovers? I adore them!”
“We don’t know what they are,” said Roy, “but we like them.”
They sat down in the wicker chairs which formed a little circle on the deep, shaded porch, the girl swinging her feet back and forth and gazing from one to the other.
“We’ve been up to camp,” Tom began. “We’re on our way down the river.”
“Oh, isn’t that lovely—I wish I was a boy! How’s the boat?”
“Gee, it is great being a boy,” said Pee-wee. “I—”
“The boat is in the best of health, thank you,” interrupted Roy, fearing that Pee-wee would say too much; “and one of the reasons we hiked up here is because we want to pay you back for it. As Pee-wee says, a scout has to be cautious and he didn’t want us to pay you back till we were sure the boat was all right.”
“I never said that!” cried Pee-wee, indignantly. “Don’t you believe him, I never said that!”
“So we’ve been a long time getting around to it,” continued Roy.
“That’s ridiculous,” said the girl. “I thought you just came to see me.”
“So we did,” said Roy.
“And we’re going to tell you our adventures since we saw you,” added Pee-wee. “We’ve had some dandy ones. One in particular that you’ll like to hear about,” he added, with an air of mystery.
“When anybody does anything for a scout,” Tom began again in his sober way, “he has to remember it and do them a good turn. We couldn’t do you one because we couldn’t think of anything big enough——”
“You see, I’ll tell you how it is,” interrupted Pee-wee, “each good turn’s got to be better than the other one—they get bigger—kind of, and——”
“That’s nonsense,” said Ruth. “Then I’d have to do you a bigger one to pay back and you’d have to—”
“We think we’ve hit on a pretty good one,” said Roy. “Anyway, how’s the bird?”
“Oh, he’s fine! He can say ‘Good-night’ and ‘Welcome, home’!”
“That’s a good thing to say just now,” Roy said.
“And I’m teaching him to say ‘Down with the Kaiser’! Isn’t that perfectly terrible! Anyway, I’m not neutral. Are you?”
“Not so you’d notice it,” Roy confessed.
“Would you go to war if we had a war?” she asked impulsively.
“Oh, I guess we’d give old Uncle Samuel a hand.”
“Isn’t that glorious! But suppose you should get killed.”
“We’re not supposing things now,” said Roy. “We’ve got something to tell you. We came back to bring you a present. When people come across with boats and things like that we don’t let them get away with it—hey, Tom? So we’re here with our little come-back. What d’ye say we stroll down on the lawn? We left our package on that bench out there; and just for the fun of it we’d like to poke around where Pee-wee pulled his stunt last summer. Then well go in and hear the parrot say ‘Welcome home’—what d’ye say?”
“Yes, but you’ve got to stay to supper, so that you can see papa,” Ruth said. “He laughs whenever he thinks of how you called him Old Man Stanton. But he isn’t grouchy—only he’ll never be the same since my brother—died. And besides, you have to tell me your adventures, you know.”
They went down the steps and crossed the lawn. The girl, running ahead, seemed not to notice the lone figure on the bench with its back toward her till she was within a few feet of it. Then she paused in surprise and as she did so, Harry Stanton rose and turned to face her, the while grasping the back of the bench nervously....
The several accounts of the three scouts as to what happened then, differed materially. There was no doubt that Ruth stepped quickly back in momentary fright, grasping the arm of Pee-wee who happened to be nearest her. Pee-wee said that her hand was trembling and that she “clutched him in terror.” Roy maintained that the “clutching in terror business” came out of a heroic scene from one of Alger’s books. Tom said that for a moment she seemed about to run, which Pee-wee admitted, claiming that she thought better of it when she found that he was near. All agreed that she was first panic-stricken and then greatly agitated as Roy took her hand and drew her to the bench.
At all events, it was only for a moment or two and then she and her brother were in each other’s arms. There is no authentic account of what happened then, for the three visitors, being good scouts, strolled to the hedge which bordered the lawn and looked at the scenery beyond. It must have been beautiful scenery and very affecting, for Pee-wee’s eyes were brimming, and Tom’s and Roy’s were not exactly what you would call dry....
RUTH AND HARRY WERE IN EACH OTHERS’ ARMS.
The return of Harry Stanton to his home was a nine days’ wonder in the village. Poor Mrs. Stanton seemed almost unable to comprehend the wonderful reality of his actual presence and she kept him by her constantly, even to the point of accompanying him back and forth from the river. The boys noted these affectionate attentions with dismay, for they wished to make a cruise in the beautiful boat, with its proud owner as their companion.
“You leave it to me,” said Pee-wee. “I know how to handle mothers; we’ve got to wait for the something or otherological moment.”
The days which followed were days of stress but of happiness to all concerned. Mr. Stanton lost no time in going to Poughkeepsie where he got all the information that could be obtained from Mr. Waring’s executor and friends as to how the eccentric but kindly old gentleman came into possession of the so-called nephew on whom he had showered wealth and sympathetic attention.
Because he had been eccentric, his intimates knew but little of his affairs, but the facts, as Mr. Stanton was able to piece them together, were that Mr. Waring had lost his wife and only son and that he had never been the same afterward. He lived the life of a recluse in his lonely, luxurious home. Two years before he had started up the Hudson in his beautiful boat, accompanied by a valet and a man to run the craft, intending to visit some remote spot where he had enjoyed the trout fishing in his early years.
All that his business friends knew in addition to this was that he had returned almost immediately, bringing with him an apparently weak-minded boy whom he called his nephew and whose self-appointed guardian and benefactor he became.
Mr. Stanton tried to find the two men who had accompanied their employer on that mysterious cruise. The valet had died, but he located the other man working in a munitions plant not far from Poughkeepsie. From this man, who spoke only broken English, he learned something of his son’s rescue.
While cruising upstream at night, he said, they had heard a cry from the water and throwing the searchlight about had located a drowning person, whom they pulled aboard. It was a boy, the man said, whose head had been frightfully injured, the skull being cracked, as was discernible through his plastered, soaking hair. He was bruised in several other places and lost consciousness as soon as they got him aboard the launch.
They had turned the boat at once and returned home, where the victim, still unconscious, was attended by “great doctors.” The man had not lived at Mr. Waring’s house and he knew very little more except what he had heard indirectly. The boy jabbered, he said, and did not know who he was and talked nonsense. Then he had heard that an operation was performed, that the edges of the broken skull were lifted up into place, and that the boy was better but “nutty.” He had later heard a rumor that the boy was dead. That was all he knew.
Mr. Stanton had had no difficulty in locating James, the chauffeur, whom Jeffrey Waring had mentioned in connection with his pigeons, and from him he had received a more coherent account of Mr. Waring’s second cruise, which was destined to have a fatal sequel for himself and momentous consequences for his ward.
James had, he said, entered Mr. Waring’s employ the year before and found the old gentleman’s nephew to be a “queer lad” who, he understood, had once had a dreadful accident of some sort. He got excited easily, the man said, and at such times said the most extravagant things. He had pigeons and dogs and lived an odd sort of life by himself.
In the early part of the summer Mr. Waring had again planned a trip to his favorite fishing retreat, believing that the quiet and remoteness of the place would help the boy, who was already greatly improved. The doctors, so the man said, had recommended the camping trip.
They had made an uneventful but pleasant trip up the river in the Rambler and after they had moored her near Catskill Landing Mr. Waring had sent James back to Vale Centre to attend to his regular duties there.
That was all that Mr. Stanton could learn and he returned home somewhat puzzled as to whether Mr. Waring had ever tried to locate Harry’s people, or whether he intended to do so when the boy should have regained his health and mental poise. He had lavished wealth and kindness on the stricken lad, that was certain; the last days of his life had been spent in a sojourn to a remote spot dear to his own memory in the hope that it might hasten the boy’s recovery; and the Stantons could not think otherwise of him than as one, peculiar indeed, but of the purest motive and overflowing with kindness. Nor did they ever learn exactly what had happened to Harry while in the water, though they held to the belief that he had been injured by the paddlewheel of some steamer.
That Garry Everson, scout, had completed the work which the old gentleman had begun was now realized by all and with it the boys realized the quiet patience with which he had borne their coldness and even their taunts.
“He’s a real hero,” said Pee-wee.
“All others are imitations,” agreed Roy.
During Mr. Stanton’s absence, Mr. Ellsworth had made a flying trip to Bridgeboro to arrange for the troop’s absence for another week or two, and meanwhile the scouts camped on the boat, spending much of their time at the Stanton place, where they played tennis and basket-ball and taught the parrot to say “I’m a scout,” and “Poor Pee-wee.”
Those were days of great delight to Ruth Stanton. In contemptuous defiance of Pee-wee’s proud assertion that “boys could do things that girls couldn’t do” she beat him again and again at tennis, and beat the rest of them, too, for she was an old hand at the game.
For the first time, too, her brother showed his interest and skill in outdoor games; his fondness for tennis seemed to come back on him in a rush, and though he sometimes got rattled and did not think quickly enough, his playing was rapid and accurate in the main and he and Ruth came out first in the tournament in which they all joined.
“And wait till you see Harry swim!” she said proudly, as, racket in hand, she sank onto a garden bench; “he can swim across the river and back; do you know how far that is?”
“I know how far it is over; I don’t know how far it is back,” said Roy.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you!”
“I’ll give you a correct imitation of a boy scout raising a racket,” Roy said, holding his racket high in the air. “Next imitation, that of a boy scout following a trail,” he added, going on his hands and knees and with an absurd air of scrutiny and stealth following the chalk mark around the tennis court.
“Isn’t he too silly!” laughed Ruth.
Roy resumed his seat beside her. “Did you hear about the Germans bombarding a man’s garden and shelling all his peas?”
“Really—” began Ruth. “Oh, nonsense, it’s a joke!”
“Why is a boy scout?” he persisted.
“What’s the answer?”
“There isn’t any. Here’s another. What’s the aim of a scout?”
“Well?”
“A correct aim. Did you hear about the scout that went camping without any duffel bag or baggage, yet he carried fifteen good-sized articles in his back pocket?”
“He couldn’t! How could he?”
“He had a copy of Boys’ Life with fifteen articles in it. Which has the most stories, Boy’s Life or the Mutual Life? Here’s another. If Every Boys’ Library caught fire, how would the smoke come out?”
“Silly!”
“In volumes, of course. Say, if it’s cowardly to strike a person who is on the ground, is it all right to hit the trail? Here’s another——”
“You seem to know so much about them,” Ruth interrupted. “Tell me what an Honor Scout is?”
“Is it a riddle?”
“No, it isn’t a riddle; I really want to know.”
“An Honor Scout is a scout that has a sense of honor. There’s only one scout in our troop that has any sense of honor—that’s Honorable Tomasso Slade alias Sherlock Nobody Holmes. He has the gold cross. Honorable Garry Everson has the silver cross. That means he has some sense of honor, but not so much.”
“I don’t believe a word you’re telling me,” she said.
Roy looked at her through the strings of his racket. “Boy Scout behind prison bars,” said he, teasingly.
“You tell me,” she said, turning to Doc Carson.
“I’ll tell you,” said Pee-wee; “you’ve got to look out for him, he’s a jollier. An Honor Scout is one that has saved somebody’s life—and gets an honor medal—see? If he takes a big chance and—and—kind of plunges into the jaws of death—kind of—”
“How?” said Roy.
“Then he gets the gold cross. If he—”
“Lands just outside the jaws,” interrupted Roy.
“Shut up!” said Pee-wee. “If he doesn’t take quite such a big chance but a pretty big one, then he gets the silver cross. And if he takes a small chance—”
“About the size of Pee-wee,” Roy put in.
“Then he gets the bronze cross,” Pee-wee finished. “See?”
They were lolling on and about the bench near the tennis court, laughing at each other’s nonsense, when Harry Stanton jumped up suddenly. Garry and Ruth watched him keenly, as they always did when he became excited.
“Oh, I’ve got an idea, a fine idea!” he cried. “I got it from what Pee-wee said——”
“All right, take your time, Stan,” said Garry.
“I tried to think of a name—a new name—for the Rambler but I couldn’t think of any. I told my mother I’d name it for Tom Slade only that wouldn’t be fair to Garry, and it would be the same if I named it for Garry—see? Anyway—anyway—she said a boy’s name wouldn’t be good, anyway. But if I name it Honor Scout, it will be naming it for both of them—won’t it?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh, crinkums, you hit it!” shouted Pee-wee, enthusiastically. “It’s an insulation—”
“Inspiration, you mean,” corrected Connie.
“What’s the difference?” demanded Pee-wee.
“Nothing—only insulation is the covering around a wire and inspiration is a good idea.”
“Otherwise they’re the same,” said Roy.
“Oh, it’s one peach of a name!” repeated Pee-wee, undaunted, and pounding the back of the bench. “It’s a piperino!”
Harry Stanton was delighted.
“It is a bully name,” said Westy Martin.
“And—and I thought of it—didn’t I,” said Harry, with the touch of childishness that still showed itself at times.
“You sure did,” said Garry.
“It’s sort of two names in one,” said Will Bronson.
“I—I thought of it just this minute,” repeated Harry, nervously.
“You’re all right, Stan,” said Garry. “Sit down and watch the game now—watch your sister trim Roy.”
“I wouldn’t play with him, he’s too silly,” said Ruth.
“You’re afraid of being beaten,” challenged Roy.
“By you? You don’t even know how to volley.”
“I know how to jolly,” Roy came back.
They played much to Harry’s amusement, which was just what Garry wanted, and Roy was ignominiously vanquished.
“Now you’re supposed to say ‘Deuce’!” Ruth called to him.
“I don’t use such language,” answered Roy.
“Bat it over there, silly, and then say ‘My advantage!’”
“I wouldn’t take advantage of a girl,” he answered.
It was no wonder he was beaten.
Roy and one or two of the others stayed for supper and Ruth took him into the kitchen (to the consternation of her mother and the colored cook) and taught him to make popovers. Being the troop’s chef, he was greatly interested and wore a huge kitchen apron on which he was continually tripping.
Upon Mr. Stanton’s return a slight cloud was cast upon the rosy plans for a cruise, partly from his hesitancy to let Harry go with them and partly because of his doubts as to whether his son ought to keep the boat at all. Of these latter misgivings he was cured by an elaborate argument of Pee-wee’s. Or, in any event, he surrendered—and Pee-wee took the credit.
“I’ve got a peach of an argument I’m going to give him,” said Pee-wee, as he and Roy and Garry were hiking it to Shady Lawn for a set of tennis. “It’s what the lawyers call a teckinality. Don’t you remember he used one last year when he gave us the boat?”
He found Mr. Stanton on the porch, and perched himself upon the railing near him, swinging his legs.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Stanton, when Pee-wee broached the subject, “whether I shall let Harry keep the boat or not. Mr. Waring was rather a queer man, and I don’t know whether we ought to take his will too seriously. I shouldn’t wish you boys to be disappointed,” he added, thoughtfully.
“Well, I’ll tell you how it is,” said Pee-wee. “You’re a lawyer, kind of, aren’t you?”
“Kind of,” Mr. Stanton conceded.
“I thought it all out last night. Now you gave us a boat, didn’t you? And I’m not saying that wasn’t a dandy thing to do.”
“I’m glad you have found pleasure in it.”
“Only the trouble was the fellow that owned the boat was alive all the time and so you really didn’t have any right to give it to us. That’s a teckinality, isn’t it?”
Mr. Stanton laughed.
“So if Harry didn’t have a boat of his own, why, then, of course, we’d have to give the Good Turn back to him—’cause it’s his, see? But, of course, as long as he has a boat of his own, it’s all right. Anyway, you couldn’t stop us from leaving the Good Turn at Nyack Landing if we wanted to. Even if you were a—a—judge, you couldn’t do that, could you?”
“I seem to be at your mercy,” said Mr. Stanton.
“And there’s another dandy argument, too—a peach!”
“If it’s one of your own, I should like to hear it.”
“Well, you want Harry to get well, don’t you? Maybe you don’t know all that Garry Everson did to make him—to help him get better. And then he gave him up so’s Tom could have a full patrol. Gee, even we didn’t know what kind of a fellow Garry was—we didn’t. But we know now, you can bet. Maybe Harry would get worse again if you took that boat away from him. He’s just thought of a dandy name for it—the Honor Scout.”
“Hmmm,” mused Mr. Stanton.
“Isn’t that one pippin of a name?”
“I think we may let him have the boat,” said Mr. Stanton, thoughtfully. “The whole circumstance is so very strange——”
“And can he make the cruise with us to Plattsburg?”
“We will see what Mr. Ellsworth thinks—and the doctor. I don’t quite see,” Mr. Stanton added, after a thoughtful pause, “how Harry can become a member of Tom Slade’s patrol, much as I should like to see him the companion of you boys. We live so far from Bridgeboro——”
“It seems that way to you because you’re not a scout,” interrupted Pee-wee, patronizingly. “But we’ve thought it all out and we’ve decided that twenty-three miles isn’t so far. You see, when you’re a scout distance doesn’t amount to anything, because we hike. And if you go scout-pace, you don’t get tired at all. Did you ever try scout-pace?”
“No, I never did.”
“Well, you’ve missed something. You ought to try it. Would you like me to show you?”
“I think I’ll stick to the automobile,” said Mr. Stanton, dubiously.
“Well, you know, when Harry gets all well he could paddle down and he could run the machine, and besides they have two autos at Roy’s and he runs them, and they’ve got one at Westy’s—of course, it isn’t exactly an automobile, it’s a Ford—and in the summer it would be easy going back and forth and in the winter we only have one meeting a week, and he could come down Fridays and stay at my house till Sunday. Oh, gee, I hope nothing will happen now to stop him from joining Tom’s patrol. Tom would be awful disappointed.”
Nothing did happen, and Pee-wee took his full measure of glory. The doctor proved his staunch supporter, and even Mrs. Stanton said reluctantly that she supposed Harry might go, but that they must be very careful to bring him safely home to her again.
“Didn’t we bring him home once?” Pee-wee demanded. “You leave it to me.”
“We’ll have the initiation on the boat, hey?” exclaimed Pee-wee. “Just like in Pinafore, kind of. Ever see that play? It’s a dandy! I saw it—the whole of it is supposed to be on a ship.”
“Can I come and see the initiation?” Ruth Stanton asked.
“I’m sorry,” began Roy, “but——”
“I don’t believe a word you say.”
“You leave it to me,” said Pee-wee. “I’ll fix it.”
So the installation of Harry Stanton as a scout and a member of the Elk Patrol took place on the deck of his own beautiful cruising launch as it lay at Nyack Landing. The troop’s own ceremony, by which Tom himself had become a scout, was used, but it had been performed so many times since then that it went off with a routine smoothness, free from any of the little hitches that are apt to mar the impressiveness of scout ceremonials. The three patrols were grouped separately and Mr. Ellsworth stood apart from them.
Garry, who, though an outsider, was asked to participate, presented the applicant to Tom.
The three simple requirements of the tenderfoot—familiarity with the twelve laws and the history of the American flag, and the ability to tie four kinds of knots—had been proved informally at Shady Lawn and it remained only for Tom to read the laws one by one, pausing after each and asking the applicant if he agreed to accept it and abide by it. Then Tom presented him to Mr. Ellsworth and Harry, nervous but trying to be self-possessed, made him the scout salute, then offered him the hand-clasp, and then made the scout sign, holding up his hand with the three fingers upright.
Then he took the familiar scout oath, and Tom stepped forward and pinned the tenderfoot badge on him. Then the whole troop filed past, each giving him the scout hand-clasp, after which he stepped back with Tom as the members of the Elk Patrol raised their voices in unison, simulating the cry of the elk.
And so the Elks, for whom the former hoodlum of Barrel Alley had striven and worked and planned, became a complete patrol at last.
“All over but the shouting,” said Roy, not letting a minute elapse. “Better to be a pro-ally Elk than a German Silver Fox, hey? Listen to the Ravens rave,” he added, as that patrol set up its familiar cry in honor of the occasion. “Some flock! Let’s give the voice of the package—I mean the pack. Come on, Foxes!”
The Silver Foxes prided themselves on the accuracy of their fox call, and the attenuated “Haa-haa” resounded musically from the hills around.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” said Ruth Stanton, standing close to Garry and Raymond, who were watching half enviously. “I don’t see how they can do it. Did you have a call when you had your patrol last summer?”
“It wasn’t much of a call, it was kind of a squeak,” said Garry in his quiet way. “We called ourselves the ‘Church Mice’ because we were so poor. It wasn’t very much of a patrol and it all fizzled out.”
“Wasn’t that too bad! Why did it?”
“Oh, one fellow had to go away to school; another moved out west, and—oh, I don’t know, it evaporated, sort of. You see, Edgevale isn’t much of a place.”
“They used to have a lake there,” interrupted Roy, “but a bird stopped for a drink one day and after that they couldn’t find the lake. Shows you what a big place it is—hey, Garry?”
Garry laughed good-naturedly.
“Not very far from where we live is Vale Centre; Warrentown is near, too. That’s the county seat and they’ve got a bully troop there.”
“Why don’t you join that?” asked Ruth.
“Well, it’s a full troop, and when a troop’s full it can’t be any fuller. You just have to start another and I guess I wasn’t smart enough—hey, Raymond? We’re just free lance scouts now,” he added. “I don’t know as they’ll call us scouts at all at National Headquarters.”
“You should worry,” called Roy, overhearing scraps of their talk.
“You’ve done something more than form a patrol,” Ruth said, soberly. “You should have heard what Dr. Brown said about you—and my father and mother. That headquarters wouldn’t dare to say you aren’t a scout.”
“Oh yes, they would—they’re very brave. They’ve got heroes in there who’d think no more of cancelling an index card——”
“You’re almost as silly as Roy. But I know you don’t think it’s a joke. I can see by the way you look at them how you feel.”
“They’re a fine troop,” Garry said, as he watched the boys. “Next to that troop in Warrentown they’re the best all-around troop I ever saw—and you see some pretty good ones up there at camp.”
Ruth told her mother that afternoon that she liked Garry better than any of them—he was so quiet and had such a funny way of saying things.
“Better than Roy?” Mrs. Stanton asked.
“Yes, Roy’s so foolish.”
But just the same, after the Honor Scout had gone away, she missed Roy immensely. Indeed, she missed them all; their brief stay (entirely apart from the miraculous return of her brother) had been a delightful event in her life, and now with only the parrot to relieve her loneliness, it seemed as if the bottom had fallen out of things. Even the parrot reminded her of Roy, for when she told the bird that it was lonesome and slow at Shady Lawn, he replied, “You should worry!”—a phrase which he had never been known to use before.
“I don’t say I’ll get it this summer,” said Tom in his sober and rather awkward way. “’Cause you can never tell what you’ll get. I care more about all the members getting them, anyway, and when we get twenty-one we’re an Eagle Patrol.”
“There’s no such thing as an Eagle Patrol, Tom,” said Mr. Ellsworth.
“If a scout is an Eagle Scout when he gets twenty-one merit badges,” said Tom, doggedly, “then a patrol is an Eagle Patrol when it has twenty-one merit badges. I don’t care what National Headquarters says.”
Mr. Ellsworth laughed. The patrol idea was so firmly rooted in Tom’s mind that he could never think of the individual scout. Rule or no rule, you couldn’t pry that notion out of his head with a crowbar. Everything was for the glory and honor of the patrol.
“You’ve only one more to get yourself to be a star scout, haven’t you?” asked Garry.
“I got nine,” said Tom. “We got sixteen in the patrol. If I get one more I’ll be a star scout as you call it. I’d like the Gardening Badge or the Automobile Badge——”
“Smallest flivvers thankfully received, hey?” said Roy.
A half dozen or more of them were sprawled upon the cabin roof as the Honor Scout glided silently up the river.
“Merit badges are a cinch,” said Roy.
“No, they’re not either,” said Connie Bennet.
“Sure, all you have to do for the Architecture Badge is to build a castle in the air. Know how to win the Astronomy Badge?” he asked, turning to little Raymond who was always hugely amused at Roy’s nonsense. “Jump out of a third-story window, land on your head and see stars. The Aviation Badge is easy, too. Fly up in the air when anybody kids you—like Pee-wee. Know how to win the Plumbers’ Badge? Just have a pipe dream. Know how to win the Photography Badge? Cultivate taking ways.”
“Tell some more,” said Raymond.
“Well, if you want the Blacksmith’s Badge, you just forge a check, and for the Business Badge, mind your own business.”
“I think we’d better mind our business,” said Mr. Ellsworth, “and slow down if we expect to stop at West Point.”
“Man the tiller, Pee,” called Roy. “I don’t mean man it, I mean small boy it.”
They paused for a visit at West Point, where they were cordially received and shown about. They saw the immaculate barracks, watched the drill which was carried through with the precision of clock-work, noted with envy the erect posture and almost mechanical salutes of the young officers, and Pee-wee, at least, felt assured that the talk which he had heard about unpreparedness was without foundation.
“It makes me feel like a tramp,” said Will Bronson, as they resumed their cruise, “to see all those swell uniforms and the way those fellows stand and walk.”
“Some class,” agreed Roy, perched in his usual place upon the combing.
Mr. Ellsworth, who was steering, laughed. “I guess they don’t always look like that,” said he.
“If Germany sinks many more of our ships, they won’t look like that,” said Connie. “They’ll put on khaki and roll up their sleeves.”
“You said something,” observed Roy.
“What would we do if the country went to war?” asked Pee-wee.
“Move to the city,” said Roy.
“I like uniforms,” said a timid voice, “because that shows what you are; a policeman makes you feel safe and so does a soldier, because they have their uniforms. It says in a book I read, ‘Show your colors’ and that means, show what you are.”
Everybody turned and stared at little Raymond Hollister who was sitting on the cabin with his feet dangling in the cockpit. It was not often that he spoke up. Indeed, he had never seemed to be thoroughly at home with anyone except Garry and Jeb Rushmore. They all liked him for the quiet, odd little fellow that he was. They seldom jollied him as they did Pee-wee and they humored his prejudices and notions when those became known. He would sit, hour in and hour out, quietly listening to their talk, laughing at Roy’s nonsense, and occasionally emboldened to defend Garry against some bantering charge.
“Right you are, Ray, old pal,” said Roy. “It’s the suit that makes the scout. That’s a good slap at Tomasso; sling it into him, Ray!”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ellsworth. (He always hesitated to direct their arguments, preferring to let them dope things out themselves.) “The uniform is only good for what it means—as it seems to me. To be a scout means certain things and to wear the uniform says to the world that you are for those things. So I’m for the uniform. The uniform is the scout’s chief badge. It’s just a great, big merit badge and it ought to be worn like the other merit badges.”
“There might be an invisible badge,” said Tom.
Everybody laughed except Tom himself.
“I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Ellsworth. “An invisible badge wouldn’t be a badge at all.”
“It would be like a silent noise,” said Roy, “You’ve got the right idea, Raymond, Show your colors. Rub it into him? He sold the Friday Evening Pest all winter and he got fifty cents twice a week for leading Miss Wade’s kindergarten class in physical torture; gee, I think he’s saving up to pay the national debt, or something! And look at him with that old book strap for a belt. Can you beat it!”
Roy’s propensity for jollying, together with his known fondness for Tom, made it possible for him to say almost anything he chose, and he never lost a chance to set people good-naturedly by the ears. But you never know where a spark is going to fall. If these sparks of wit had fallen only upon Tom they would have had no more effect than water, for he knew Roy, and their friendship was as a rock.
But they fell upon little Raymond Hollister, where they ignited other sparks which were already smouldering. Like many boys who have been invalids and have been much by themselves, Raymond had notions; away back home he had first been attracted to the scouts by the trim khaki regalia; it was the first bait Garry had used with him, and to Raymond at first a scout was simply a boy who wore a khaki suit. With Garry’s help, the pale-faced little fellow had managed to wriggle through the tenderfoot tests, and then he wanted his suit. It was all he had thought of. I dare say there are a few other scouts like him. He had not delved very deeply into the Handbook.
The members of the little struggling patrol had slipped away until there was no patrol, but Raymond still wore his precious suit and felt that he was a Boy Scout. Perhaps he had the right idea, too, if you will just subtract his prejudice. Show your colors is a good slogan, but little Raymond went farther than that. He assumed that if you didn’t show your colors it was because you didn’t have any; and like most scouts of the tenderfoot class, he was a great stickler for the khaki, for its own sweet sake.
He had (as he had confided to Pee-wee that first night in camp) never “fallen for” Tom Slade. There was not much of the scout glamor about Tom and Raymond liked the scout glamor. He worshipped Roy and he idolized Garry. He was so jealous for Garry that he looked on Tom as an unfair rival. Who had sent that smudge signal from the hill? Who had made Harry Stanton get better? And who had been treated like a dog during his whole vacation? Who but his friend, Garry.
And who had taken Harry Stanton when he got better, and broken up the little patrol which was just starting up all over again? Why, that was the fellow in the gray shirt and the book-strap belt, who was no scout at all—Tom Slade. Raymond knew what a scout was—he had seen pictures enough of them.
Probably, his diffident nature would have kept him from saying more now except for Roy’s laughing encouragement and the belief that Mr. Ellsworth stood with him. In any event, he launched forth in a way which astonished them all.
“That’s why you don’t wear the uniform—because you’re not a scout!” he shouted at Tom. “You’re too stingy, you are, and everybody knows it! You’ve no right to go with fellers that are scouts! You—you get them to name their boats after you—fellers—fellers that you stole—yes, stole, you did!”
It was unfortunate that both Mr. Ellsworth and Garry, either of whom could have smoothed this thing out in half a jiffy, were on the forward deck getting the anchor ready to cast, and the other scouts were too surprised, and perhaps a little too amused, to put a stop to his tirade. Probably they did not think it would affect Tom.
But Raymond, losing all control of himself, his eyes brimming and his voice trembling, went on:
“That’s because—you—you lived down in an alley where people kill each other—and burglars live—and men get drunk and you don’t know how other kinds of people act—you don’t.... And maybe, you stole other things before—maybe you did—before you ever stole Jeff—I mean Harry Stanton! I wouldn’t call you a scout with your old rags on—I wouldn’t. Scouts wear the uniform and they don’t steal——”
Then they stopped him.
“It’s my fault,” said Roy, as Connie vaulted to the cabin edge and put his arm about Raymond, trying to quiet him.
“I know about scouts—I do—and I know what a scout is—I do——” he shouted, almost crying.
“All right, all right, Ray,” said Connie, soothingly.
Tom Slade looked up, straight at Raymond. He was gulping and it was pitiful to look at him. “I know I did,” he almost sobbed. “I——”
“Never mind, Tom,” said Roy, softly. “Don’t mind him. He doesn’t mean it.”
“I know I did,” Tom said again. “But you can have an invisible badge, just the same—I don’t care for Mr. Ellsworth or anybody.”
With a supreme effort to control himself, swallowing sob after sob in great painful gulps, he pushed aside the cabin locker, went down into the cabin and banged the door shut.
Roy followed after him, but Tom’s stolid nature had been pierced at last and he turned away even from Roy.
“Of course, you can, Tom,” said Roy, almost frightened at his emotion. “You can have an invisible badge, Tom—I know you can, Tom.”
He did not know exactly what Tom had meant; like many of his expressions, it had been a puzzle to them all, but he would have said almost anything now to soothe him and help to efface those black memories.
“Sure you can, Tom,” he repeated. “That’s easy—old man. It’s a cinch!”