Ken tossed the handle into the river, a proud Scout having demonstrated that along every line it was not “Skirts go ahead—skirts take the lead!” even if they were ceremonial skirts.
“Well! I guess our Scoutmaster and Toiney will feel easy about us now; they surely got some of that message I flashed ’em,” he proclaimed sliding down the rock, feeling like a king-boy. “’Twas good of you girls to let me make a fire-stick an’ fiddlestick out o’ your camp broom,” laughing triumphantly. “We owe you a supper, too, Tommy an’ I—I hope you’ll let us pay it back some time!”
“Oh! yes, when we visit your camp—if we ever do. Boys can’t cook like girls, though!”
“Can’t they? Haw! Haw!” came in accents of cotton-wool irony from the Astronomer’s padded throat. “We’ll give you red-flannel hash, with frills to it. I say, Ken, let’s give ’em something now—let’s give a rousing Scout yell for them! She”—leveling a fat finger at Penelope—“first got me to thinking that I only thought I thought, she thought I was poisoned. Hey! that was the way of it, wasn’t it?” appealing to the convulsed Penny. “Now, then, rise to it, Kenjo!”
The youthful signalman fought shy of this ebullition at first, but on Captain Andy’s saying approvingly: “That’s the very caper! Good idea, Ken; go ahead an’ drive it!” he did drive the patriotic yell in honor of their girl-hostesses with all the might that was in him.
With his arm across the Astronomer’s fat back as the latter stood with cushioned legs wide apart upon the sands, Tommy’s arm, likewise, embracing his backbone, swaying together like double bellows, they pantingly drove that yell while the dune-breeze joined in and the sonorous gush of the high tide, too, seemed to proclaim that it was the “very caper,” a proper tribute, indeed.
“A-M-E-R-I-C-A
Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!
U. S. A.
Camp Fire Girls! Camp Fire Girls!