"Yer--yessir."
"You heard the judge say you haven"t any relations and, in a way, he was right, but he was mistaken, too, for a scout is a brother to every other scout and you"ve got lots of brothers, thousands of them; or will have when you get to be a scout. And after you get to be a scout, why you"ll have a pretty big pack to carry. The question is, can you carry it?"
"Yessir."
"You"ll have to carry the pack for all these brothers of yours. If _you_ make a slip--tell a lie or throw a stone or interfere with Ching Wo--everybody"ll say it"s the Boy Scouts. Just the same as if Roy Blakeley should send a flash message wrong. The telegraph operator would give us the laugh and say the Scouts didn"t know what they were doing. You and I"d get the blame as well as Roy. So you see, Roy"s got a pretty big pack to carry, but he manages to stagger along with it.
"You may have noticed that the Scouts are great fellows for laughing.
If there"s any laughing to be done, we"re going to be the ones to do it. We don"t let anybody else have the laugh. That"s our middle name--laughter.
"There"s one other little thing, and then I"ll tell you the main thing I want to say--flash it, as you fellows would say. We have to be careful about talking. Stick your tongue out a little way between your teeth and say them."
"Them," said Tom.
"The first thing for you to do is to make a list of all the words you use that begin with "th" and say them that way. You know we have troop calls and patrol calls and all sorts of calls, and we"ve got to be able to make them just right--see?"
"Sure-yessir."
"Now you take that word you use so much--"ye-re." "Yes" is better because it"s only got three letters and you can flash it quicker. So one of the first things to do is to make the school books work overtime (there"s only two or three weeks more) and get all those words just right; _them, those, three_--because if you said "tree" and meant "three" it might throw everything endways. We have a lot to do with trees in the summertime, and you want to be able to say"three" just right, for another reason.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTSIDE SCHMITT"S GROCERY THEY FOUND A "BOY WANTED"
SIGN.]
"There are three parts to the Scout Oath and we don"t want to get those three parts mixed with trees. So whenever you"re thinking of the oath, say _three_ and whenever you"re thinking of going to Salmon River Grove, say tree."
The boy was much impressed.
"But, Tom, the immediate thing to do is to go down to Schmitt"s Grocery and take down that sign he"s got outside."
"I told Roy Blakeley I wouldn"t take down no more signs."
"You can tell Roy you took this one down with me--just for a stunt."
Outside Schmitt"s Grocery they found a "Boy Wanted" sign, and then Tom understood. He hesitated a little when Mr. Ellsworth went in, for his relations with Mr. Schmitt had not been altogether cordial.
"How"d do, Mr. Schmitt," said the scoutmaster breezily. "How"s the Russian advance?"
"Dem Roosians vill gett all vot"s coming to dem," said Mr. Schmitt.
"Yes? Well, how about this boy?"
"Veil, vot about him?"
"He wants to take down that sign out there."
"Och! I know dot poy!"
"No, you don"t; this is a different fellow--a Boy Scout."
"Veil, if dis iss der kind of a poy scouts--"
"Now, look here, Mr. Schmitt, don"t you say anything about the Boy Scouts. Who stopped your runaway horse for you last week?"
"I didn"t say noddings about dem--"
"Well, a scout is a brother to every other scout, and if you say anything against one you say it against all."
He winked significantly at Mr. Schmitt. "Come back here, I want to speak to you," said he.
They retired to the rear of the store, where Mr. Schmitt leaned his arm affectionately over the big wheel of the coffee-grinder and listened, all attention.
Tom overheard the words, "fresh air," "Boys" Home," "something to do,"
"appeal to honor," "sense of responsibility," and more or less about woods and country and about a "boy to-day being a man to-morrow," and about "working with him," and other odds and ends which he did not understand.
"Veil, it"s a goot ting, I"ll say dot mooch," said Mr. Schmitt, as they returned to the front of the store. "Dere is too mooch cities--dey don"t got no chance."
"Tom," said Mr. Ellsworth, "I"ve been telling Mr. Schmitt about that signal work. (He was wondering what the light was.) And I"ve told him about your wanting to earn a little money before camping time. He"s going to start you in on three dollars and a half a week, school-days after three and all day Sat.u.r.days and Sat.u.r.day nights. He asked me if you could deliver goods and I told him there wasn"t a boy in town who could "deliver the goods" like you. Remember the pack you"ve got to carry for the whole troop. If you fall down, you"ll queer the troop-Roy Blakeley and all of us.
"Mr. Schmitt"s a busy man and he has no time to think of what you were doing a few days ago, so don"t you think about that either. You can"t follow a trail looking backward--you have to keep your squinters ahead.
Isn"t that so, Mr. Schmitt?"
"You can"d look forwards vile you are going packwards," said Mr.
Schmitt. "You come aroundt at dree o"clock, to-morrow."
"Now, Tom," said Mr. Ellsworth, as they left the store, "my idea is for you to stay at Mrs. O"Connor"s, and give her your money every week. Roy says he"d like to have you go up several nights a week and stay at Camp Solitaire, so I think maybe three dollars a week to Mrs. O"Connor will be all right. Then she"ll save the other fifty cents for you and by the time we start for Salmon River you"ll have enough, or pretty near enough, for a uniform.
"For instance, you might go up to Camp Solitaire every other night and eat plum-duff and eggs with Roy. He says they"ve got chickens enough up there to keep the camp going. He uses so many eggs, one way or another, I should think he"d ashamed to look a hen in the face. And remember about the colors coming down at sunset. Uncle Sam"s a regular old maid about such things, you know. And don"t forget page--what was it?"
"Tree--three hundred and seventy-five," said Tom.
"That"ll tell you all about the flag. Then I want you to turn to page 28 in the Handbook and study our law. We have our own home-made laws same as everything else, plum-duff and fishing rods--all home-made."
Tom laughed.
"I"ll want to know what you think of those laws. I think they"re pretty good; Roy thinks they"re great, but then Roy"s half crazy----"
"No, he isn"t."
"He doesn"t know as much as he thinkgs he does," the scoutmaster came back.
"He knows all dem--them signs backwards."
"You"ll beat him out at it," said the scoutmaster. "Anyway, he"s going to post you about the sign and the salute, and that leaves only the knots. You take a squint at those knots in the Handbook. I can improve on two of them, but I won"t tell you how. You"ve got to get the hang of four of them, and I want you to see if you can"t do all this by Sunday afternoon. But remember, Mr. Schmitt comes first."
Mr. Ellsworth blew into Mrs. O"Connor"s with the same breezy pleasantry that he had shown Mr. Schmitt, to the great edification and delight of Sadie McCarren. He created quite a sensation in Barrell Alley and Mrs.
O"Connor, good woman that she was, fell in with his plan enthusiastically.
The next morning Tom was up at six, wrestling with the O"Connor clothes-line, and by half past seven he had mastered the reef-knot and the weaver"s knot, which latter he used to fasten two loose ends of the broken line for permanent use, and he wondered whether this by-product of his early morning practice might pa.s.s as a "good turn."