"Oh, that's fine!" Molly assured him briskly. "You'll be taken in with the Black Eagles. You see, Handy Wallace moved to Beloit almost a year ago, and Sandy Anvers was sent East to school; so that leaves only seven. And the patrol is going to do things this year," she went on warmly. "There will be high-school football teams and baseball and basketball teams and everything else, and there will be lots of Black Eagles on every team, too. I just know so."
The boy's face lost its smile. "I'm not sure whether I'd be taken into that bunch or not," he confessed slowly. "I'm not much good at athletics."
"Nonsense! Of course you are!" nodded Molly reassuringly. "And, besides, even if you aren't, you'd be good in just a little while. You only have to try."
"I—I'd like to," he agreed, as the car stopped in front of the Fair Play Factory's annex. "I'd certainly like to."
A round, jolly face showed at the window to the right of the door, and presently Horace himself, Scout Master of the Black Eagle Patrol, middle-aged and good-natured, greeted him from the entrance.
"What can we do for you this morning, Mr. Sefton?" smiled the inventor. "Do you want to buy a pair of skates or some hockey sticks, or shall you wait for the cold weather?"
Molly's father laughed. "We have a young man here who has been climbing a butternut tree, and Molly tells me you own a special brand of stain remover that can handle even accidents like this one."
Horace Hibbs raised his right hand. "Don't say another word. We will send those stains to the Happy Hunting Ground in about two minutes."
By the time Rodman Cree came back to the waiting car, not only was his clothing free from the blemish of the butternut, but his wish to join the Boy Scouts had grown from a very moderate desire to one truly giant-sized. Never before, he thought, had he met anybody who understood boys as did Horace Hibbs; and what the Scout Master told him about the patrol made him wish that he knew scouting from A to Z, and, in addition, could run the hundred in ten seconds, and broad-jump across a river.
"Of course he's fine," agreed Molly, "but just wait till you know the boys in the patrol—Bunny Payton, the patrol leader, and Bi and Nap and S. S. and Jump and Specs and Roundy; and, oh, just wait till you've seen our new high school!"