“As I expect to stay in these parts for six months, or longer, I’ll get transferred from the Philadelphia Peewits to the new patrol!” decided Nixon.
“Bully for you! We’ll ask Kenjo Red and Sweetsie to come in; they’re dandy fellows—and who else?” Leon hesitated.
“Why don’t you get hold of that frightened boy who was with Toiney on the edge of the woods? We had a boy like him in our Philadelphia troop,” went on Nixon hurriedly, ignoring a surge of protest. “Scared of his own shadow he was! Abnormal timidity—with a long Latin name—due to pre-natal influences, according to the doctors! Well, our scoutmaster managed somehow to enlist him as a tenderfoot. When he got out into the woods with us and found that every other scout was trying to help him to become a ‘fellow,’ why! he began to crawl out of his shell. He’s getting to be quite a boy now!”
“But the ‘Hare’! he’d spoil—Ouch!” A sudden wrench of agony as Leon moved restlessly put the pointed question as to whether the mental pain which Harold Greer suffered might not be as hard to drag round as a thunderstorm ankle.
“All right, Nix! Enlist him if you can! I guess you’ll have to pass on who comes into the new patrol.”
Colin dug his nose into the pine-tips with a skeptical chuckle: that new patrol would have a big contract on hand, he thought, if it was to gather up the wild, waste energy of Leon,—that element in him which parents and teachers sought to eradicate,—turn it to good account, and take the fright out of the Hare.
But from the woods came a deep bass whoop that sounded encouraging: the Whoo-whoo-hoo-doo-whoo! of the Grand Duke bidding the world good-morning ere he went into retreat for the day.
It was answered by the Whoo-whoo-whooah-whoo! of a brother owl, also lifting up his voice before sunrise.
“Listen, fellows!” cried Leon excitedly. “Listen! The feathered owls themselves are cheering the Owl Patrol.”