So you see it’s best to always think twice before you do a good turn. Don’t be in too much of a hurry about it. Because a good turn might go wild and cause a lot of trouble. You’ve got to take a good aim.
As long as Jib Jab had told us we’d always be welcome, Harry said, it would be best for him and Dorry and I to wait till the show was over that night and then go in and make a call on him. So he told the fellows that we’d hang around in the woods for one more day and hike it for Newburgh in the morning. He said that would give us a chance to get some provisions in Kingston and to stalk in the mountains. They all liked the idea, only Brent Gaylong said his fellows didn’t have many eats and they didn’t want to be sponging on us.
Harry said, “We’re all one family and I’m sick of this Silver Fox outfit, anyway. It’ll help to vary the monotony.” That was always the way he talked.
In the afternoon I took a walk through the woods with Brent Gaylong and the little fellow he called Willie Wide-awake. He was a nice little fellow. He found a four-leaf clover and he said, “Maybe that will change our luck.”
I said, “Maybe; you never can tell.” And, oh boy, didn’t I just laugh to myself. You wait, that’s what I said to myself.
Gaylong said, “The trouble with us fellows is that we started our great and glorious troop during the war. Everybody was organizing troops—France, Germany, Uncle Sam, Italy—and we got lost in the shuffle. Too much competition. We’ll land rightside up yet. But when I look over that scout magazine and see all the ads of things scouts want, it sort of makes me discouraged. Knives, cameras, bicycles, canoes, magic lanterns, toy steam engines, tin railroads, fancy memorandum books, electric motors! I suppose I’m behind the times, but just about all we want is a little place to meet in, and our scoutmaster back again and the price of a welcome for him, that’s all. That, and the woods.”
“You said it,” I told him. “You should worry about all those ads; they have nothing to do with scouting. All they’ve got to do with scouting is that they’re good to kindle a camp-fire with. Scouting doesn’t cost anything when you once get started.”
“It would cost about ten dollars a minute if some people had their way,” he said.
“Sure,” I said, “they’d have you looking like Santa Claus. You should worry.”
“But I ought not to kick,” he said; “because I’m to blame for this wild goose chase. You see I wanted to get the kids out of doors. I wanted to get their minds off patent sleds and go-carts, and goodness knows what all. I was brought up in the country and I wanted them to have a taste of adventure—the kind of stuff that isn’t advertised, you know.”