“I guess I’m in for it,” said Emerson.
“Sure you’re in for it—don’t you be scared. We could go home by the road from Westfield, but that’s longer, so we’ll take a short-cut through Van Akren’s woods, hey?”
Pee-wee had a terrible fright when the train slowed down as it approached Bridgeboro. He was prepared to restrain the gentle Emerson by main force from violating the time-table. But the train gathered speed again and went gliding past the familiar station on which the baffled Emerson bestowed a lingering and wistful gaze. He was indeed, as he had said, in for it.
And being in for it, he resigned himself to the inevitable like a good sport. At Westfield he agreed to the hike back through the woods, and though his attitude was one of good-humored reluctance, there seemed no doubt that he meant to keep his word with Pee-wee.
“Gee whiz, I didn’t make you lose your wits,” the little missionary said. “You can’t say I’m to blame, but anyway I’m glad of it.”
“As long as it had to happen, I’m glad it happened with you along instead of some one else,” said Emerson. “You deserve to win because you kept your word and went to the city with me when you didn’t want to. You’ll see I can make good too.”
They hiked into the woods south of Westfield and were soon enclosed by the dark, stately trees and the silent night. In a marshy area near the indistinct trail which wound away among the trees could be heard the steady, monotonous croaking of frogs, those nocturnal heralds of the spring. Somewhere in the distance an owl was hooting. Yet these sounds seemed only to emphasize the stillness. They were startled by every twig that crackled under their feet.
“When scouts don’t want to make any noise, they wear moccasins,” said Pee-wee; “I’ll show you when we go to camp. Oh, boy, you’ll see scouts from all over the country up there. Maybe you kind of won’t like it at first but after a while you will. I bet you’ll be crazy about stalking; I bet you’ll be dandy at it. Signaling too. Anyway, I admit I had fun to-night in the city, and, gee whiz, I like you too, that’s one sure thing. It seems kind of as if I know you now; you treated me dandy, I’ll say that. Good night, I knew all about circuses anyway, so what’s the difference, but anyway I didn’t know you; but now I do.”
But he did not quite know Emerson. For it was not just that Emerson did not understand tracking and stalking and signaling. He did not understand how to get acquainted and to make himself liked. He did not know how to speak the language of boys—that language which is the admission card to their vast fraternity.
That was the tragedy of Emerson Skybrow. He said policeman and cinema and exhibition and talked about going for constitutionals, and those things stood in his way. It was necessary for some boy to look behind these things and to discover the real boy who knew how to be generous and kind and friendly. And that boy had never come along and Emerson was lonely and isolated.