Our Father.
A Prayer that we may be Forgiven any Wandering Thoughts we have had while Reciting these Prayers.
Breakfast over, and orderly jobs finished, the Pack went down to the shore and had a splendid bathe. Several of the Cubs had really begun to swim; while Bill, Dick, and Mac, who could swim already, were getting good practice. Mac meant to get his Swimmer's Badge as soon as he got back to London, so he practised floating and duck's diving and the other things you have to do.
After dinner and rest Father took some cricket practice, because to-morrow there was to be a match.
"No one must talk to me," said Akela, settling down in a sunny corner with some papers; "I'm doing something very important." Cubs always want to know everything, so of course they said, What was the important thing?
"Reading proof," said Akela.
"What's 'proof'?" said the Cubs.
"This is proof," said Akela, holding out a long narrow strip of printed paper. "It's the way they print stories at first, and it has mistakes in it. I have to read it through and correct the mistakes. Now, if you don't shut up and go away, the next instalment in the Wolf Cub will have mistakes in it—see?"
"Is it the next bit of the 'Mysterious Tramp'?" cried the Cubs.
"Yes."
That did it. A Cub sat down each side of Akela and read over her shoulder, and one jumped up and down in front, saying: "Miss, is it good?"
Every now and then Akela made strange little squiggles in the margin—secret signs only the printer-man could understand.
"Coo! what silly mistakes he makes!" said one of the Cubs in derision. "I wouldn't have done that in dictation even when I was in Standard I.!"
"I think he makes very few mistakes," said Akela; "other printer-men make lots more. You see, this one is printing the Wolf Cub, so he has to do his best."
The cricket people had been "doing their best" at cricket to such good purpose that they had succeeded in splitting one of the bats.
So after tea Akela and some of them went down to the man who sells bats and golf-balls, down by the tennis-courts. The road where his shop is runs between the seashore and a big stretch of grassy land, called the Dover.
"That," said Akela, "is the very place where Billy got carried up by the giant kite."
It was a favourite story of the Cubs, so they were pleased to see the place.
"Is that the fierce bull?" said one.
"No," said Akela, "that's a sleepy old cow."
The man said he would mend the bat in time for to-morrow's match.