"Dear Mary—Since you butted in Tom and I have decided that it would be best for Pee-wee to go with him and I'll stay here. Anyway, that's what I've decided. So you'll get your wish, all right, and I should worry.
"Roy."
Tom took the sealed envelope, but paused irresolutely in the doorway. It was the first time that he and Roy had ever quarrelled.
"What did you say to her?" he asked.
"Never mind what I said," Roy snapped. "You'll get your wish."
"I'd rather go alone with you," said Tom, simply. "I told you that already. I'd rather see Pee-wee stay home. I care more for you," he said, hesitating a little, "than for anyone else. But I vote to take Pee-wee because Mary wants—asks—us to. I wouldn't call it a good turn leaving him home, and you wouldn't either—only you're disappointed, same as I am. I wouldn't even call it much of a good turn taking him. We can never pay back Mary Temple. It would be like giving her a cent when we owed her a thousand. I got to do what I think is right—you—you made me a scout. I—I got to be thankful to you if I can see straight. It's—it's kind of—like a—like a trail—like," he blundered on. "There can be trails in your mind, kind of. Once I chucked stones at Pee-wee and swiped Mary's ball. Now I want to take him along—a little bit for his sake, but mostly for hers. And I want to go alone with you for my own sake, because—because," he hesitated, "because I want to be alone with you. But I got to hit the right trail—you taught me that——"
"Well, go ahead and hit it," said Roy, "it's right outside the door."
Tom looked at him steadily for a few seconds as if he did not understand. You might have seen something out of the ordinary then in that stolid face. After a moment he turned and went down the hill and around the corner of the big bank building, passed Ching Woo's laundry, into which he had once thrown dirty barrel staves, picked his way through the mud of Barrel Alley and entered the door of the tenement where Mrs. O'Connor lived. He had not slept there for three nights. The sound of cats wailing and trucks rattling and babies crying was not much like the soughing of the wind in the elms up on the Blakeley lawn. But if you have hit the right trail and have a good conscience you can sleep, and Tom slept fairly well amid the din and uproar.