“Come on, Chips,” he advised. “No sense making a fuss. We’ll see Mr. Silverton later on.”
“Like fun you will,” Saul Dobbs muttered as the four Cubs started away. “I’m telling you, he’s had his fill of young tereduns.”
Completely discouraged, the boys treked back to the village. By now they were firmly convinced that if Dobbs had not poisoned Mr. Silverton’s mind against them, he would do so at the first opportunity.
“This is getting serious,” Brad said. “We’ve got to see Silverton somehow, even if it means calling his office every day.”
Warm and out-of-sorts from the long hike, the four boys dropped in at a village drugstore for ice cream. The proprietor glanced rather sharply at them as they entered a booth at the rear of the store, or so it seemed to Brad.
“Anything wrong with us today?” he remarked to the Cubs. “Everyone seems to give us the icy stare.”
“Hadn’t noticed it,” Dan replied, reaching for the menu.
“Well, maybe I imagined it,” the Den Chief shrugged.
But later, after the four had finished their ice cream, Chips paused at the counter rack a moment to flip the pages of a comic magazine.
“No loitering,” the drugstore owner reprimanded him. “If you’ve finished eating, go on outside. I can’t have you cluttering up the place.”