“I guess it’s no use our trying to get hold of him,” Coombsie was saying meanwhile in his cousin’s ear. “See that old dame over there, Nix?” he pointed to a portly, elderly woman with an immense straw hat tied down, sunbonnet fashion, over her head. “Well! she took care of Harold’s mother before she died; now she keeps house for his grandfather, and she, that old woman, told my mother that up to the time Harold was seven years old he would often run and hide his head in her lap of an evening as it was coming on dark. And when she asked what frightened him he said that he was ‘afraid of the stars’! Just fancy! Afraid of the stars as they came out above the clearing here!”
“Gee whiz! What do you know about that?” exclaimed Nixon with a rueful whistle: that dark hobgoblin, Fear, was more absurdly entrenched than he had thought possible.
Yet Harold’s seemed more than ever a case in which the scout who could once break down the wall of shyness round him might prove a true éclaireur: so he advanced upon the timid boy and addressed him with a honeyed mildness which made Coombsie chuckle and gasp, “Oh, sugar!” under his breath; though Marcoo set himself to second his patrol leader’s efforts to the best of his ability.
Together they sought to decoy Harold into a conversation, asking him questions about his life, whether he ever went into the woods with Toiney or played solitary games on the clearing. They intimated that they knew he was “quite a boy” if he’d only make friends with them and not be so stand-offish; and they tried to inveigle him into a simple game of tag or hide-and-seek among the bushes as a prelude to some more exciting sport such as duck-on-a-rock or prisoner’s base.
But the hapless “poltron” only answered them in jerky monosyllables, cowering against the bushes, and finally slunk back to the side of the blue-shirted farmhand with whom he had become familiar—whose merry songs could charm away the dark spirit of fear—and there remained, hovering under Toiney’s wing.
“I knew that it would be hard to get round him,” said Marcoo thoughtfully. “Until now all the boys whom he has met have picked on an’ teased him. Suppose you turn your attention to me for a while, Nix! Suppose you were to make a bluff of teaching me some of the things that a fellow must learn before he can enlist as a tenderfoot scout! Perhaps, then, he’d begin to listen an’ take notice. I’ve got a toy flag in my pocket; let’s start off with that!”
“Good idea! You do use your head for something more than a hat-rack, Marcoo!” The patrol leader relapsed with a relieved sigh into his natural manner. “I brought an end of rope with me; I thought we might have got along to teaching him how to tie one or other of the four knots which form part of the tenderfoot test. You take charge of the rope-end. And don’t lose it if you want to live!”
He passed the little brown coil to his cousin and receiving in return the miniature Stars and Stripes, went through a formal flag-raising ceremony there on the sunny clearing. Tying the toy flag-staff to the top of his tall scout’s staff, he planted the latter in some soft earth; then both scouts stood at attention and saluted Old Glory, after which they passed and repassed it at marching pace, each time removing their broad-brimmed hats with much respect and an eye on Harold to see if he was taking notice.
Subsequently the patrol leader stationed himself by the impromptu flagstaff, and delivered a simple lecture to Coombsie upon the history and composition of the National Flag; a knowledge of which, together with the proper forms of respect due to that starry banner, would enter into his examination for tenderfoot scout.
Both were hoping that some crumbs of information—some ray of patriotic enthusiasm—might be absorbed by Harold, the boy who had never been to school, and who had scantily profited by some elementary and intermittent lessons in reading and writing from his grandfather. His brown eyes, shy as any rodent’s, watched this parade curiously. But though Toiney tried to encourage him by precept and gesticulation to follow the boy scouts’ example and salute the Flag, plucking off his own tasseled cap and going through a dumb pantomime of respect to it, the “scaree” could not be moved from his shuffling stolidity.