I said, “Well, if I were you, Dub, I’d take that one last test and go home an Eagle Scout. That’s what I’d do if you’re asking me. I know that wouldn’t fix it for you so you could stay, and even the Gold Medal wouldn’t, but just the same an Eagle Scout is an Eagle Scout, I don’t care where he is. Gee, I’m sorry you didn’t get the Burnside money. But what’s the good crying over spilled milk—there’s water enough in it already. Boy, if you were in my patrol you’d be an Eagle in one day. Twenty badges and then you flop! Good night!”
“I think I’ll flop out of the Scouts altogether,” he said, kind of gloomy.
“Sure, and be a quitter,” I told him. “Why, look at Will Dawson in my patrol—you know, that tall fellow? He’s got eight merit badges—first aid, athletics, both health badges, and pioneering. Those are the five you have to have for Star Scout. You know you don’t have to have the life-saving badge on that. He’s got the other five picked out—I have to laugh, he picked out easy ones. Angling! Jiminies, he was always doing that—all the fishes call him by his first name. Archery, that’s a cinch. And bugling! Oh boy, all you have to do is blow on a trumpet. Carpentry and bird study, those are the only ones he has to get. I had to laugh when he was practising hammering a nail. He got a blood blister and he put some iodine on it and he wanted the first aid badge. First aid to himself. Bird study isn’t so easy. By the time we have the closing events he’ll be a Star Scout and we’re going to make a big fuss about it and have a corn-roast and everything. And, gee whiz, that’s only half as good as an Eagle Scout.”
Dub said, “Yes, but where will he be? And where will I be?”
“Awh, come out of it,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything, only just walked behind me along through the woods close to the lake. On that opposite side from camp the trail is good and plain because it’s a little way up a hill kind of. There aren’t any swampy places over there. But you have to go single file till you get where the woods are thinner.
Dub said, “I’d like to be at that corn-roast.”
“Maybe you’re lucky not to,” I said. “Maybe there won’t be any. Maybe it will be like old man Bagley’s will and the reward for the bandits. Gee, will you ever forget that?”
“Don’t be talking about it,” he said.
“Maybe Will Dawson won’t even get by with bird study—believe me, the birds have got something to say about it.”