“Look at Tom Slade!” Pee-wee shouted, speaking while he held the apple with his teeth in order to throw a light on his compass.
“Tom was a hoodlum if that’s what you mean,” said Roy. “He wasn’t a sissy. You’ve got something to work on with a hoodlum. If Arabella wants to hit the great outdoors, as he calls it, let him join the Camp-fire Girls. Forget it, kid; it’s all right to be friends with him but for goodness’ sake pike around and get somebody else to join your patrol. You’ll never get Arabella, take that from me. He just wouldn’t fit in, and he wouldn’t join anyway.”
“It isn’t so easy to get fellers,” said Pee-wee, reminiscent of his dubious experience as a missionary. “Who could I get, tell me that—you’re so smart.”
“What’s the matter with Toby Ralston?” Connie queried.
“There you are,” agreed Roy, “and you’d get two scouts in one. You’d get Robin Hood, too.”
“Oh, boy! Some scout!” said Connie.
CHAPTER XXIV
ROBIN HOOD
They emerged into the road at North Bridgeboro where other scouts were already straggling after their fruitless quest. None of the parties had anything to report except that they were tired. Pee-wee reported, also, that he was hungry. They gathered on the dark platform of the little North Bridgeboro station, considering what to do next.
Across the road from the station were the country store, the grain and feed yard, and several other stores and buildings, locked and in darkness. In all that rural solitude only one bright spot was to be seen, the dirty stained-glass windows of Hamburger Mike’s “eats” wagon.
“Let’s go over and get some pie and coffee,” one of the disheartened searchers suggested.