“What kind of a good turn do you call that?” Dorry asked him. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak.
“That’s a new one on me,” Ralph Warner said.
“Suppose there were bandits in the automobile?” the kid shouted. “There! You think you’re so smart. I know lots of good turns that are fun. Suppose I tripped you up so you couldn’t chase a—a—poor little girl so as to steal—a—a——”
“A piece of candy from her,” I said.
“That would be a good turn,” the kid shouted.
I said, “Well, Kid, if a fellow doesn’t believe in breaking windows and throwing broken glass in the street and tripping people up, he would never make much of a scout. I wouldn’t want a fellow like that in my patrol. Forget it. We’re just as much obliged to you, but the Public Library is the place for that wild animal. We could never tame him.”
“Maybe if he could only see that scouts have a lot of fun,” the kid said; “because he thinks they don’t do anything but good turns. I wish I could get him for you, I know that, because you did a lot of things for me. But he only just laughed at me and he said we didn’t have any fun.”
I said, “Kid, you’re a little brick. When it comes to good turns you eat them alive. We should worry about Warde Hollister. If he wants to camp out on his wild and woolly front porch, we should bother our young lives about him. Let him lurk in his hammock. Some day the rope will break and he’ll die a horrible death. What are you squinting your eye at?” I asked Westy.
He was sitting on the swinging seat beside me squinting his eye awful funny.
He said, “Keep still, stop swinging for a second. Do you see that tree away, way over on the ridge? Do you know what kind of a tree that is?”