"Laugh away and welcome, boys," he remarked, grimly. "Feels better already, Thad, and if the stuff will only do the business I don't care what happens. Besides, the fellows must have their fun. But they wouldn't think it a joke if any of them had climbed up, looking for a honey pot, and dropped through the rotten stuff that covered the hole in the top of that stump."
"Well," said Step-hen, "if it had been our monkey, now. He'd have had a great time climbing out; but Davy could have done it; he's more at home in a tree than on the ground."
He said this because the Jones boy was as nimble as an ape when he found an opportunity to show off his gymnastics; he dearly loved to hang from a limb by his toes, and carry on like a circus athlete or trapeze performer.
"Do we make a start now?" asked Bob White; "exactly fifteen minutes spent, suh, in rescuing our comrade in distress."
"Are you able to walk with us, Bumpus?" asked Thad.
"Oh! I guess I can amble along somehow," responded the fat boy; "but please detail a couple of scouts to keep near me, in case I begin to swell again. I'm sorry we haven't got a rope along; because I'd feel safer if I had one wrapped around me right now."
"Where's my campaign hat?" burst out Step-hen just then; "anybody seen it layin' around loose? I declare to goodness it's queer how my things always seem to disappear. I often think there must be some magic about it."
"Huh! the only trouble is you never keep a blessed thing where it belongs," declared Davy, in scorn. "Now, there's Smithy, who goes to just the opposite extreme; he's too particular, and wastes time, which a true scout should never do. The rest of us try to be half-way decent; and you notice we seldom lose anything. There's your old hat right now, just where you flung it when we dropped down here."
"Oh! thank you, Davy; perhaps I am just a little careless, as you say; but all the same it's funny how my things always go. Hope, now, I don't lose that splendid little aluminum compass I bought the other day, thinking that it might save me from getting lost in the woods some time."
"Oh! come along, old slow-poke, we're going to start There's Bumpus trying to screw his lips into a pucker right now, so he can blow the bugle. Ain't he got the grit, though, to attend to his business with that swollen face?"