"So am I! You see, it takes some time to be a scout. It'll take every spare minute you've got to get ready. It's something that can't be done in a hurry. But here you've got more than a year to prepare yourself."

"More'n a—a year?"

"All scouts are twelve."

"Oh!" A shadow clouded the gray eyes.

"But a year means that you can get yourself in dandy condition. And would you mind showing me how fit you are now?"

Johnnie spread out his hands deprecatingly. "That's the trouble," he declared, looking down at his big, old clothes. "They don't fit."

But when he understood just what Mr. Perkins meant, in a twinkling he had slipped Barber's shirt over his head and was standing bared to the waist, all his little ribs showing pitifully, and—as he faced square about—his shoulder blades thrusting themselves almost through a skin that was a sickly white. "Ain't I fine?" he wanted to know. "Don't I look good'n strong?"

The glasses came tumbling off Mr. Perkins's nose. He coughed, and pulled out the white handkerchief again, and fell to polishing the crystal discs. "Fair," he said slowly. "But there's room for improvement."

Johnnie sensed a compassionate note in the answer. "Course I ain't fat," he conceded hastily. "But when Mrs. Kukor gives me filled fish I can see a big diff'rence right away!"

"Fat isn't what a boy wants," returned Mr. Perkins. "He wants good blood, and strong muscles, and a first-class pair of lungs!"