“There, he’s taking a message right now, and it may be for you, Bumpus!” he said.
A minute later, the operator came toward them, holding out a yellow paper.
“Here’s the answer from Cranford,” the telegraph man remarked, with a smile; and Bumpus could hardly take the sheet, his hands trembled so terribly.
Less than ten minutes later, a very stout youth, clad partly in the uniform of the Boy Scout organization, might have been seen running wildly down toward the river, followed closely by another, evidently belonging to the same patrol. And as Bumpus ran, he was waving above his head a yellow sheet of paper, while he let out frequent roars, that seemed to be fashioned on one key, and that of joy.
“She’s come, fellers!” was the burden of his whoops; “and I did my duty all right, just like I always said I must a done. He says I delivered the letter that mornin’, when I met him on the street. That makes me happy, and I’m ready to buy the best gun I c’n get in this town, and stay up in the Maine woods a whole month, if the rest of you want me to.”
They did stay some weeks longer, and met with a series of strange adventures, that some of the boys believed really excelled those that had befallen them in the Penobscot region. What these happenings were, and just how Thad and his five chums acted their parts most manfully in the face of many difficulties will be found recorded in the pages of the next volume of this series, now published under the title of “The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods,” or “A New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol.”
“By the way, Bumpus,” remarked Thad, later, as they sat around, taking their ease, “did the cashier tell you what the nature of that communication was; and did it turn out to be so dreadfully important?”
Bumpus grew red in the face and grinned.
“Oh! shucks! I s’pose you all have just got to know,” he remarked. “It was on’y a line from my dad, tellin’ the cashier he’d lunch with him that same day, and take him out in his new Alco car. You know my dad’s the president of the bank, but he’s been sick at home for a long time, and had to get a car to take him out in the air. But who cares for expenses; gimme two cents’ worth of gingersnaps? I’m feelin’ fine right now’, and c’n afford to laugh at all my silly worryin’. Might a known a scout wouldn’t do such a silly thing as to forget an important message. Shucks! Step Hen, let’s go around and see if we can find that gun anywhere. I’ve got the money to buy it all right.”
Of course the boys understood that the pretended anxiety of Bumpus in connection with trouble coming to his family through carelessness on his part had all been put on; but what he had feared was the reproaches of his father, who had long been trying to cure him of this same fault.