As he bent over to pick up his bag, the movement set his head to throbbing afresh. His exploring fingers encountered a lump, where he had hit the curb, that felt about the size of an ostrich-egg. Dale’s forehead wrinkled, and he opened the bag mechanically, only to find the remaining papers were soaked through and ruined. Those he had wrapped around his hands lay in the mud at his feet, soggy masses of pulp. And he had delivered only four out of the lot!
Dale tried to smile, but his lips only quivered. With a second, more determined, effort, he clenched his teeth tightly, slung the empty bag over his shoulder, and started back toward the news-stand. But he went in silence. Somehow the usual whistle was impossible.
CHAPTER II
THE NEW TENDERFOOT
It was close to half past seven before Dale delivered his last paper. He had been delayed in the beginning by old Jed Hathaway’s having to know all about it, and insisting on hearing every little detail before he could be induced to provide a second supply. Dale tried to be patient under the cross-examination of the garrulous old newsdealer, but it wasn’t easy when he knew that each minute wasted now was going to make it harder to get through in time for the scout meeting. When he was released at last, he hurried all he could, but the minute-hand of the old town-clock was perilously close to the perpendicular when he got back to the square again.
Clearly, there was no time to go home even for that “hurry up” snack he had been thinking about. There wasn’t even time to get a sandwich from the lunch-wagon, two blocks away. “Have to pull in my belt and forget about it till I get home after meeting, I reckon,” he thought.
In suiting the action to the word he realized that his hurried efforts at the news-stand to clean off the mud had been far from successful. It plastered his person, if not from head to foot, at least from the waist down, and now that it was beginning to dry, it seemed to show up more distinctly each moment. He couldn’t present himself before Scoutmaster Curtis in such a plight, so he raced across the square to his friend Joe Banta’s shoe-cleaning establishment, borrowed a stiff brush, and went to work vigorously.
Brief as was the delay, it sufficed to make him late. Though not at all sectarian, Troop Five held its weekly meetings in the parish-house of the Episcopal church, whose rector was intensely interested in the movement. These were scheduled for seven-thirty on Monday evenings. There was usually a brief delay for belated scouts, but by twenty minutes of eight, at latest, the shrill blast of the scoutmaster’s whistle brought the fellows at attention, ready for the salute to the flag and the other simple exercises that opened the meeting.
Precisely one minute later Dale Tompkins burst hastily into the vestibule and pulled up abruptly. Through the open door a long line of khaki-clad backs confronted him, trim, erect, efficient-looking. Each figure stood rigidly at attention, shoulders back, eyes set straight ahead, three fingers pressed against the forehead in the scout salute, and lips moving in unison over the last words of the scout oath.
“... To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
“Colors post!” came crisply from the scoutmaster facing the line.