“You can wear your old suit right along, if you have to,” he remarked; “and even if you have to throw away the other, better do that than get a heavy cold from trying to let it dry on you. That’s all very well in hot August weather; but there’s a little tang in the air, even away down South here, along in December. So strip to the skin, and make yourself comfortable.”
Giraffe concluded that after all this was the best policy; and so he set to work, paying little heed to the jests of his chums, who, like all boys, could never let so good a chance to joke an unlucky companion pass by.
“Next time you see a log, Giraffe,” Bumpus told him, “take a second look before you go to punch it with your paddle. They say logs down here have got teeth, and can take a big bite right out of an oar. We don’t want to lose any of our paddles; and let me warn you that it’s risky jumping overboard after one when you do drop it in the drink. We’d hate to see you make a meal for a hungry ’gator; though for that matter it’d be a pretty slim dinner he’d get!”
“Well, one thing sure,” retorted the tall scout, who was now fully dressed, and feeling in readiness to do battle again; “I wouldn’t blame any old ’gator if he declined to gobble you for a relish right now, and that’s what.”
“There you go again, but on account of your recent trouble I’ll let it pass. A fellow that has just been nearly scared to death ain’t responsible for half he says,” and the fat boy waved his hand toward the other as though he really meant it.
“From the way you’ve been pestering us lately about that stuff you forgot to take home to your mother from the drug store, I’d think you had troubles of your own to bother about,” retorted Giraffe. “I never saw such a fellow to keep thinking of little things that don’t amount to a row of beans. Why, you admit it only cost five cents, and yet to hear you let out a howl about it every little while, you’d think it was worth a whole dollar.”
“It ain’t that,” said Bumpus, with dignity, “but I’m so built that when anything gets on my nerves like that has, I just can’t sleep till I’ve solved the puzzle. Did I take that little package home and give it to my mother, or did I leave it anywhere on the way? That’s the question I’d like to have solved; and I mean it shall be, if I have to write to three separate boys whose houses I stopped in on my way home, to tell ’em what a ge-lorious time I expected to have down here.”
“But you did write to your mother from Memphis, to ask her about it; and when we got letters back at that last town you nearly took a fit because there wasn’t any for you,” Davy Jones went on to say, taking a hand in the affair, though he was as far away from Bumpus in the other end of the boat as he could possibly get.
“That’s all very true,” replied the fat scout, composedly; “and now I’ve got to just hold in, and wait a long time till we get more mail. It bothers me more’n words can tell you. A scout should never fail in his duty; and my mother said she wanted what she wrote on that paper the worst kind. What if it was only five cents; I’m not thinking of the amount, but the fulfilling of my duty. Thad always says that’s the main thing to consider. Faithful in little things, is my motto.”
“Hear! hear!” cheered Bob White, from the other boat.