“Once a scout, always a scout, hey?”
“That’s it,” Tom said.
They strolled along in silence for a few minutes, Hervey occasionally stealing a side glimpse at his elder, who ambled on, apparently unconscious of these admiring glances. Now and again Tom paused to examine a patch of moss or some little tell-tale mark upon the ground, as if he had no knowledge of his companion’s presence. But Hervey appeared quite satisfied.
“I’ll tell you how it is,” he finally said, selecting what seemed an appropriate moment to speak; “I was elected as the one in our troop to go after the Eagle award. We want an Eagle Scout in our troop. We haven’t even got one in the city where I live.”
“Hear that?” Tom said. “That’s a thrush.”
“A thrush?”
“Yop; go on,” Tom said.
“So they elected me to win the Eagle award. Some choice, hey? I had seven badges to begin with; maybe that’s why they wished it onto me. I had camping, cooking, athletics, pioneering, angling, that’s a cinch, that’s easy, and, let’s see—carpentry and bugling. That’s the easiest one of the lot, just blow through the cornet and claim the badge. It’s a shame to take it.”
“You mean you’ve won thirteen more since you’ve been here?” Tom asked.
“That’s it,” said Hervey. “First I got my fists on the eleven that have got to be included in the twenty-one, and then I made up a list of ten others and went to it. I chose easy ones, but some of them didn’t turn out to be so easy. Music—oh, boy! And when I started to play the piano, they said I wasn’t playing at all, but that I really meant it. Can you beat that?”