WHAT A SCOUT LEARNS
"Huh! so far as the nuts go, I haven't any objection," remarked George; "but to my mind it's going to be like casting pearls before swine. They'll never appreciate the real motive back of the thing; and chances are they'll reckon we're throwing them a sop so they won't hold hard feelings against us."
"Perhaps you're right, George," Elmer admitted; "but don't forget we're every one of us true scouts, and that we've promised to hold out the olive branch to those we call our enemies, whenever we find the chance. There's such a thing as heaping coals of fire on another fellow's head, doing a kindness to the one who hates you, and making him ashamed of himself. Scouts learn that lesson early in their service, you remember. If we didn't have all the nuts ourselves, perhaps I'd hesitate to put this up to you, but it's no sacrifice to any of us."
"Elmer, I agree with you there," Ted spoke up. "Of courth none of us may ever know jutht how they take it; but when a fellow hath done his duty he needn't bother himthelf wondering whether it payth."
"Listen to Ted preach, will you?" jeered Toby, who truth to tell was not much in favor of carrying those three half-filled hags of nuts all the way to town, just to serve as a "consolation prize" to those fellows who had conspired to cheat them out of their just dues.
"But he's right in what he says," maintained Chatz stoutly, for he had a Southerner's code of honor, and was more chivalrous that any other fellow in the whole troop of scouts. "Duty is duty, no matter how disagreeable it seems. And when once you realize that it's up to you to hold out a hand to the treacherous enemy who's flim-flammed you many a time, why, you'll have no peace of mind till you've made the effort."
"But," Toby went on to say, sneeringly; "if you step up to Connie Mallon, and say: 'Here's your bags come back, and we chucked the leavings in the same, which the ghost is sending you by us to sort of soft soap your injured feelings,' why, d'ye know what he's apt to do; jump on you, and begin to use those big fists of his like pile drivers. You'll have to excuse me from being the white-winged messenger of peace, Elmer. I pass."
"There's no need of doing it that way, Toby," he was informed by the scout master. "Some time to-night, as late as we can make it, we'll carry these partly filled bags around to Connie's place, and drop them over the fence. Hold on, here's another of the same sort; now, if we only had that as full as the rest it would be just one all around, and we could leave them in each yard, you see."
"Like old Santa Claus had been making his annual visit, only this time he picked out Thanksgiving time instead of Christmas," remarked Toby, a trifle bitterly; and yet strange to say he was the very first one to start in gathering more nuts and thrusting his find into the fourth Mallon bag; which told Elmer that much of his objection was mere surface talk, and that his heart really beat as true to the principles of scout membership as did any other present.
"Many hands make light work," and so plentiful were the several varieties of nuts that it was not long before the fourth bag was half filled. No doubt those boys felt better because of this act. The chances were they would never get any credit for what they were doing, but as Elmer told them, the consciousness of having done a decent act should always be quite enough for any ordinary scout.