I had just said a few words to the troop of my pleasure at seeing them so smart and so efficient, when the alarm was given that the school buildings were on fire. A few brief words of command were given by the Scoutmaster, and each patrol streaked off in a different direction at a great pace. We hurried to the scene of the outbreak, and had just time to see (in our mind's eye only) dense clouds of smoke with tongues of flame and showers of sparks bursting from the doomed building, while the windows were alive with terrified women and screaming children—that is what we were picturing—when out came a knot of Scouts running the fire-hose into position, and joining it up from one part of the building, while from another there came a second patrol trundling along the great giraffe-like fire-escape. Within four minutes of the alarm the leading fireman was up on the ladder directing the nozzle of the hose-pipe with a strong jet of water on the windows of the (supposed) burning chamber.
It was all very smartly, quickly, and quietly carried out, and the patrols thoroughly deserved the Firemen's Badges which they had won.
Denstone College, where I saw all this, is one of the great schools which have taken up scouting as a sport and training for their boys; and the results, according to the masters who act as Scoutmasters, are most satisfactory.
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SCOUTS' GOOD TURNS.
Recently, all in the one day, I came across three cases of Scouts doing their duty.
One lady told me that when travelling in a crowded train she and her daughter were put into a carriage which was already crammed full of boys.
She did not like it a bit at first, but she soon found the difference between "Scouts" and "boys." These were "Scouts," and they at once helped the ladies and their baggage into the carriage, and then made plenty of room for them by sitting on each other's knees, and kept order and behaved so nicely that she fell in love with all of them, and talked with them and found them "quite charming and gentlemanly."
Another lady told me that some Scouts had asked leave to camp in her grounds, and as she has allowed boys to do this for some years past, she did not like to refuse them: at the same time she was not very glad to have them, because she had found it expensive and troublesome every year to have to get the camping-ground cleaned up and set right after they had gone.
The day after the Scouts had finished their camp, she sent as usual some men to work on the camp-ground, when to her astonishment, they came back and said there was no work to be done there, the ground was all clean, rubbish and ashes removed, and turf replaced. And then she remembered that these were "Scouts," not ordinary boys, who had been camping there—and she will be glad to see them there again whenever they like to come!