“You were so enthusiastic that night we were out on the lake,” Brent said kindly. “I think the trouble is you don’t mix in; you don’t let them know what you can do.”
“Look at Everson—”
”I know, but Everson did something big; he saved a fellow’s life. You do something big and then’ll fall all over themselves; they’ll make a pathway to your door as old somebody-or-other said. That’s the short, quick way. Otherwise you just have to mix in.”
“Yes,” said Billy with a pitiful air of self disgust, “but there are scouts here that don’t do anything so very big and they—look at Blakeley.”
“I know, Blakeley has personality, he attracts, sort of like a magnet.”
“So have you,” said Billy.
“Thanks,” Brent said.
“Trouble with me is I want to do something big and I don’t know how to do it. What you said about little stuff and little scouts sticks in my mind. I know I don’t feel at home with them. That isn’t my fault, is it?”
“Surely not,” said Brent, thoughtfully, as if he were honestly trying to understand this strange, unhappy fellow.
“I just can’t hand a trustee a whisk-broom and—you know what I mean. And it’s the same with stunts. If I can’t do something big I won’t do anything at all.”