“That’s a good one,” laughed Wyne. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with Willetts. I won a trip to California and had it changed to a summer at Temple Camp after I read the book. I did that so I could get here before Willetts and win the Warring Memorial award and be ready for him when he came. I knew blamed well he’d show up—I got his number.” He paused a moment while the councilor looked rueful and shook his head. “The book doesn’t say anything about what sort of a fellow I can have, or anything about him. It just says I can have as my guest for the balance of the summer anybody between the ages of twelve and eighteen of my own choosing. And he shall be recorded as my honor guest. That’s all there is to it and I choose Hervey Willetts. If he goes away I have to go, too.”
“Why do you choose him?” the councilor asked.
“Oh, I don’t know; just because I do, that’s all. Do I have to say why?”
“No, I don’t know that you do,” Councilor Easton said, not unpleased at Wyne’s vehemence, which almost bordered on impertinence. “But, of course, this is a very unusual thing and I must confer with the management.”
“Will you let Tom Slade have a vote?” poor Hervey asked.
“Tom Slade knows all about it,” said Wyne. “If you only stood on as solid ground as I do most of the time, you’d be all right. Will you put down Hervey Willett’s name, Councilor? He’s the one I choose. I’m going by just what the book says about the Warring Memorial award. It says any boy⸺”
Suddenly, Wyne Corson was interrupted and beaten into silence by a tremendous voice from a diminutive spectator, conspicuous because of a licorice smootch near his mouth. It was the mighty voice of Pee-wee Harris! “It’s a dandy argument and it’s a teckinality,” he shouted. “And it shows how the camp can’t do anything even if it wants to, because if a thing is printed in writing you can’t get around it and that settles it and I know, because my uncle knows a man who’s a judge! And maybe even I’ll have Hervey Willetts in my patrol as an honorary member, maybe!”
Even amid the laughter, Hervey looked at Wyne Corson, bewildered, uncertain, with glistening eyes. Was he grateful? Was he reached at last? No, not by scouting. But by a scout? That would be something. Here was a strange kind of a stunt! Such a stunt as he himself had never performed. A stranger had come to Temple Camp and deliberately set about beating it with its own weapons. He had brought with him just no more than a booklet with certain passages in it marked with a lead pencil. He had planned and wrought. How tawdry seemed that daredevil climb up the flagpole now! How rash and futile that dive at the Farrelton Carnival! How silly that stunt of sending in a false fire alarm! How much finer to use one’s head, than just to stand on one’s head!
And did Hervey think of these things? Not just in the way they have been set forth. But he felt cheap and inadequate. His latest stunt had been officially ignored with a kind of brief contempt. But this boy from South Farrelton had stepped up with his booklet and the record of his three mile swim around the lake and Temple Camp could not answer him back—was helpless. What is a stunt anyway? Here was a matter of a hundred and fifty dollars or so; a matter involving a clash between an ultimatum and the right of a winner to his award. And Wyne Corson had triumphed over Temple Camp. And Hervey Willetts, diver of dives, and ringer of alarms, and snatcher of satchels, was to stay and spend the summer in these familiar scenes. And his guardians would go to Europe never knowing. What is a stunt anyway?
He wandered forth and picked up a stick and started along the trail that went around the lake. But he glanced back (something he never did when starting out) and Wyne Corson followed him. And so they ambled through the bordering woods together.