"Oh!" said Clarence Prissler softly. "Oh!" The pink spots in his cheeks crimsoned suddenly—and the color lasted.
"And you ran across little Jimmy Bobbs, too," continued Bunny, smiling a little over the recollection. "He was standing on a corner and looking mighty lonesome, and when you invited him to fall in with the other fellows in the bunch he jumped at the chance and said 'Thank you!' away down in his throat. And he turned out to be a dandy sort of fellow himself. Seems he's wanted to know you for a long time; says you're the smartest boy in school. He's coming around to the hospital this afternoon to see if you'd mind his bucking up on his studies with you as an audience. He thinks it will help you to catch up and help him, too, at the same time. Want to see him?"
"Why—why, yes, I certainly do. I—I've been worrying a lot, Bunny, about my lessons."
"You needn't any more, then. Because Nap Meeker is planning to do exactly the same thing. Wants to. And all the other Scouts are coming to see you, too, if you don't mind their crowding in here."
Prissler blinked his eyes. "I—I don't mind," he said, with a catch in his voice.
"Well, let's see. I think that was about all you did. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot Professor Leland. I think he was a bit suspicious of our actions. Anyhow, he loomed up suddenly in a dark spot and demanded to know if we had done or were planning to do any ma—malicious mischief. I just wish, Prissy, you could have been there in your own body to hear yourself—your proxy, I mean—deny any such intentions. Specs McGrew asked if he didn't understand that you, Clarence Prissler, were leading the crowd. Professor looked at me kind of funny, and I had to explain. He just smiled and begged our pardons, and said that if he had known you were at our head, even in spirit, he wouldn't have bothered to question us. He knew you!"
There followed a brief silence. Bunny broke it by remarking, in a careless manner:
"Now that Rodman Cree is a member of the Black Eagle Patrol—you knew that, didn't you?—and almost ready to be promoted from tenderfoot to second-class Scout, he's beginning to worry about ever getting to be a first-class one. You see, Prissler, before he can be advanced, he must train some other boy to become a tenderfoot, and he can't find anybody in town who thinks enough of the Scouts to want to be one of them."
The boy on the bed squirmed uneasily.
"But when he does—"