“That’ll tell you all about the flag. Then I want you to turn to page 28 in the Handbook and study our law. We have our own home-made laws same as everything else, plum-duff and fishing rods—all home-made.”
Tom laughed.
“I’ll want to know what you think of those laws. I think they’re pretty good; Roy thinks they’re great, but then Roy’s half crazy——”
“No, he isn’t.”
“He doesn’t know as much as he thinkgs he does,” the scoutmaster came back.
“He knows all dem—them signs backwards.”
“You’ll beat him out at it,” said the scoutmaster. “Anyway, he’s going to post you about the sign and the salute, and that leaves only the knots. You take a squint at those knots in the Handbook. I can improve on two of them, but I won’t tell you how. You’ve got to get the hang of four of them, and I want you to see if you can’t do all this by Sunday afternoon. But remember, Mr. Schmitt comes first.”
Mr. Ellsworth blew into Mrs. O’Connor’s with the same breezy pleasantry that he had shown Mr. Schmitt, to the great edification and delight of Sadie McCarren. He created quite a sensation in Barrell Alley and Mrs. O’Connor, good woman that she was, fell in with his plan enthusiastically.
The next morning Tom was up at six, wrestling with the O’Connor clothes-line, and by half past seven he had mastered the reef-knot and the weaver’s knot, which latter he used to fasten two loose ends of the broken line for permanent use, and he wondered whether this by-product of his early morning practice might pass as a “good turn.”
Before he went to school, Mrs. Beaman, a neighbor, came in and said that after long consultation with her husband she had decided to offer three dollars for the Slade possessions, and in the absence of Bill Slade, the estate was settled up in Tom’s interest on that basis. So he went forth feeling he and John Temple were alike in at least one thing-they were both capitalists.