So it was with the four members of the Owl Patrol who had received the boy scout medal for life-saving—the silver cross suspended from a blue ribbon, awarded to the scout who saves life with considerable risk to himself—for their gallant work in rescuing the old woman’s grandson from the frozen waters of the tidal river. Their own moved feelings at that the finest moment of their young lives were thereafter as a shining mantle veiling the peculiarities of her who, solitary and defenseless, had once been regarded as fair game for their most merciless teasing.
She was not so solitary now. Much shaken by the accident to her grandchild, she was in no fit state to return to her baldfaced house on Christmas Eve or for many days after; so Public Opinion at length took the matter into its own hands and decreed that henceforth she must find a home with her daughter.
There, in a little dwelling on the outskirts of the town, she often watched the khaki-clad scouts march by. Invariably they saluted her. And Jack, the rescued nine-year-old, would strut and stretch and stamp in a vain attempt to hasten the advent of his twelfth birthday when he might enlist as a tenderfoot.
The Saturday spring hikes were varied by trips down the river when each patrol in turn was taken on an excursion in Captain Andy’s motor-boat. It was on such an occasion that Nixon Warren, who had begun his scout service as a member of the Peewit Patrol of Philadelphia, obtained his coveted chance of seeing Spotty Seal at close quarters.
“You stay round Exmouth during the spring an’ summer, Nix, and I’ll take you where you’ll see a seal close enough for you to shake his flipper,” promised the sea-captain; and he kept his word, though the pledge was fulfilled after a fashion not in accordance with his intentions.
It was a glorious day, when the power-boat Aviator, owned by Captain Andy, left the town wharf with six of the Owls aboard in charge of the assistant scoutmaster, Toiney Leduc, and with the absurd little rowboat that danced attendance upon the Aviator, and which was jocosely named the Pill, bobbing behind them on the tidal ripples at the end of a six-foot towrope.
Spring was on the river to-day. Spring was in the clear call of the greater yellow-legs as it skimmed over the marshes, in the lightning dart of the kingfisher, in the wave of the tall black grass fringing each marshy bank, showered with diamonds by the advance and retreat of a very high tide tickled into laughter by the April breeze.
And spring was in the scouts’ hearts, focusing all Nature’s joy-thrills, as they glided down the river.
“Houp-e-là! I’ll t’ink heem prett’ good day for go on reever, me,” announced Assistant Scoutmaster Toiney, his black eyes dancing.
And he presently woke the echoes, while they wound in and out between the feathery marshes, with a gay “Tra-la!” or “Rond’! Rond’! Rond’!” that seemed the very voice of Spring herself bursting into song.