"That's the ticket, Mr. Secretary, get eight ballots ready, and let's write first choice and second, majority rules," and the patrol leader nodded in the direction of his chum Allan, just as much as to say it was easy to guess what one vote would be.
"Count as I call out, Bob White. Here goes now: Maine first choice, Rocky Mountains second."
"Hurrah!" cried Bumpus.
"Another for Maine, with the Saskatchewan country of Canada second," Thad went on; "but this comrade forgot that as American Boy Scouts we do not want to spend our money and vacations in a foreign land."
When the eight ballots had been counted, strange to say Maine was first choice with every one, and the Rockies well in the lead as second.
"Move we make it unanimous," laughed Giraffe, which was duly done according to statute.
"Much good that will do, with a whole year to wait, because it wouldn't pay to go up into Maine for only Christmas week," grumbled Step Hen.
But strange to say it was decreed in a most remarkable way that the wish expressed by the scouts should be made an actual fact, and just how this came about the reader will find duly set forth in the third volume of this series entitled, "The Boy Scouts on the Trail, or Scouting through the Big Game Country."
In due time the scouts arrived at Cranford station, where their coming had been anticipated; for the story of how the boys had found the missing husband of Mrs. Quail had somehow gotten around, since Cranford had its gossips. One of these happened to be calling on the lady at the time Bob's telegram arrived. Of course its nature was such as to give Mrs. Quail a shock, though she quickly recovered; but there had been ample time for the visitor to glance at the message, between dabs at the face of the fainting lady with a handkerchief wet with cologne. And that was how the news got out.
"Look at the crowd, would you?" gasped Bumpus, as he poked his head out of the door, and saw what seemed to his excited imagination about the whole of Cranford filling the home station, and craning necks in the endeavor to be the first to glimpse the resurrected father of Bob Quail.