THE REALLY HARD PART
"Maybe you'll remember how you said this would just be a kind of an experiment, my starting to work again in the office, and maybe it would turn out to be better for me to go away in the country," said Tom.
"Yes sir," said Mr. Burton, with prompt good nature intended to put Tom at his ease.
"I was wondering if maybe you could keep a secret," Tom said.
"Well, I could make a stab at it," Mr. Burton said, laughing.
"Do you think Margaret could?" Tom asked.
"Oh, I dare say, but you know how girls are. What's the trouble?"
"I want to go away," Tom said; "I can't do things right and I want to go away. I'm all the time forgetting."
"I think you're doing fine," said Mr. Burton.
"I want to go up to Temple Camp until I feel better," Tom said.
Mr. Burton scrutinized him shrewdly and pursed up his lips and said, "Don't feel first rate, eh?"
"I get rattled awful easy and I don't remember things," Tom said. "I want to go up to camp and stay all alone with Uncle Jeb, like you said I could if I wanted to."
Again Mr. Burton studied him thoughtfully, a little fearfully perhaps, and then he said, "Well, I think perhaps that would be a very good thing, Tom. You remember that's what I thought in the first place. You made your own choice. How about the secret?"
"It isn't anything much, only I thought of something to do while I'm up there. I got to square myself. I gave the troop cabins to a troop out west——"
"Well, I was wondering about that, my boy; but I didn't want to say anything. You'll have Roy and Peewee and those other gladiators sitting on your neck, aren't you afraid?"
"They got no use for me now," Tom said.
"Oh, nonsense. We'll straighten that out. You send a letter——"
"The scoutmaster of that troop out west is a friend of mine," said Tom, "but I never knew it until this morning, when I got a letter from him. They think I did it because I knew it was him all the time and liked him better, but I don't care what they think as long as nobody loses anything; that's all I care about. So if you'd be willing," he continued in his dull, matter-of-fact way, as if he were asking permission to go across the street, "I'd like to go up and stay at Temple Camp before the season opens and fell some of those trees on the new woods property and put up three cabins on the hill for Roy and the troop to use when they get there. I wouldn't want anybody to know I'm doing it."
"What?" said Mr. Burton.
"I want to go up there and stay and put up three cabins," said Tom dully.
"Humph," said Mr. Burton, sitting back and surveying him with amused and frank surprise. "How about the difficulties?"
"That's the only thing," Tom said; "I was thinking it all over, and the only difficulty I can think about is, would Margaret keep it a secret until the work is done, and you too. They think I'm not a scout any more, and I'm going to show them. If you think I can't do it, you ask Pete, the janitor. And if I straighten things out that way nobody'll get left, see? The hard part is really your part—keeping still and making her keep still."
"I see," said Mr. Burton, contemplating the stolid, almost expressionless face of Tom, and trying not to laugh outright.
"My part is easy," said Tom.