I said, “You bet I know; and I have to admit you’re right, too.”
“Of course, there wasn’t any chance of finding that fellow, Chandler,” he said; “but what’s the difference? We had about seven dollars, and the kids wanted to buy one of those moving picture machines, ‘Boy Scouts, Attention! Here is just what you want!’ You know. So I just took the seven plunks and brought them up this way on a hike. Something they really did want. I thought maybe there was one chance in twenty of finding that Chandler, but I didn’t say so. I let them think the chance was fair. Anyway, we had a hike. We were out for adventure. They forgot about the cornets and the clock-work gew-gaws that they really didn’t want. We’ve been scouting. We’re broke, but we’ve been scouting. We hiked up to a remote village after a missing person. Romance! Adventure! We’ve been scouting. Hurrah, and a couple of bravos! That fellow Donnelle has the right idea; and he’s a brick.”
“Believe me, that’s the biggest compliment you ever paid a brick,” I said.
“So here we are,” he said; “cleaned out and happy, and living on our scout brothers. That’s the idea, isn’t it? Brothers? Poor relations, hey? But we’re real, honest-to-goodness, scouts. None genuine unless labeled Church Mice. Boy Scouts, Attention! Here is something you really want. Hiking! Adventure! Some day or other we’ll stumble into fifty or a hundred dollars, but by the Big Dipper we’ll get it scouting. That fellow Donnelle has the right idea; he’s a peach.”
“Believe me, he’s a whole orchard,” I said
Then neither of us said anything for about a minute, only we kept wandering along through the woods and we stopped and watched a chipmunk in a tree and kept good and still so he wouldn’t be scared. And Brent Gaylong picked up a locust, awful careful, and held it in his two fingers and showed Willie Wide-awake how its wings went and how it was different from a bird. And Willie Wide-awake held it in one hand, because he had the four-leaf clover in the other hand. It was nice in the woods. I found a red lizard, too; the kind that come out after it rains. I guess he made a mistake, hey? There are lots of them up that way.
I said, “You just keep that four-leaf clover and it’ll bring you luck. If you can stand a pine cone on your thumb and hold it that way till you count ten, then you can make a wish and it’ll come true.”
So Willie Wide-awake balanced a pine cone like that and counted ten and then he said, “I wish we’d get a hundred dollars and I wish Mr. Jennis would hurry up and come back.”
And then I batted the pine cone away with a birch stick, so as to make the wish come true. You’ve got to be sure the stick is made of birch.