Mrs. Bennet “Comes across”
“No, we heard you long before we saw you. I wish now that Connover’s sense of hearing were a little more acute. Then he’d have been able to distinguish the locality of a human voice. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk.”
Mrs. Bennett listened breathlessly while he repeated the story of the afternoon’s occurrences. While he was talking a scout approached, removed his hat, saluted Mr. Ellsworth, and handed him a paper. It was a memorandum of the temperature of the river water, an amateur forecast of the weather for the next day, and a “stunt” proposition for O. K. The scoutmaster asked one or two questions and dismissed the messenger. Mrs. Bennett was a little surprised to notice that the questions seemed to bear with practical sense and foresight upon the physical welfare of the boys.
“Do you give your approval to everything?” she asked.
“No—not always,” he laughed.
“And what then? You can’t watch them all.”
“Oh, dear, no; I just give my veto and forget it.”
“You take the temperature of the river?”
“Yes, and test it for impurities twice a week. Doc attends to that. Come inside, Mrs. Bennett.”
She greeted the reclining O’Connor boy and smoothed his forehead tenderly.