Brent Gaylong said, “I get you.”
“I’ve flopped around all over the world and I haven’t got a cent to show for it,” Harry said, “and if anybody told me there was a lead pencil buried up near the North Pole, I’d go after it. What fun is there buying a lead pencil in a store? Poor old John D. Rockerfeller could do that much.”
“I get you,” Gaylong said.
“Besides, didn’t you meet us?” Harry said. “We’re better than a hundred dollars, I hope. Fun hasn’t cost a cent; it’s the only thing that hasn’t gone up in price. Maybe the wandering warrior is having the time of his life, too. And you’d go and spoil it all for him. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found. Never thought of that, did you? What you fellows need is not a hundred dollars. You need the scout idea. Adventure!”
“Righto,” Gaylong said.
“But we’d like to have that hundred dollars,” the little fellow named Willie piped up.
“True again,” Gaylong said—awful funny.
Of course, I knew that was the way Harry would think about it, because’s he’s one of that reckless, happy-go-lucky sort. I guess Brent Gaylong was kind of the same way. Anyway, before we lay down to go to sleep, I said to Gaylong:
“Would you mind letting me have that article to read by our lantern while you fellows are spreading the balsam?[[1]]”