“You should worry,” called Roy, overhearing scraps of their talk.
“You’ve done something more than form a patrol,” Ruth said, soberly. “You should have heard what Dr. Brown said about you—and my father and mother. That headquarters wouldn’t dare to say you aren’t a scout.”
“Oh yes, they would—they’re very brave. They’ve got heroes in there who’d think no more of cancelling an index card——”
“You’re almost as silly as Roy. But I know you don’t think it’s a joke. I can see by the way you look at them how you feel.”
“They’re a fine troop,” Garry said, as he watched the boys. “Next to that troop in Warrentown they’re the best all-around troop I ever saw—and you see some pretty good ones up there at camp.”
Ruth told her mother that afternoon that she liked Garry better than any of them—he was so quiet and had such a funny way of saying things.
“Better than Roy?” Mrs. Stanton asked.
“Yes, Roy’s so foolish.”
But just the same, after the Honor Scout had gone away, she missed Roy immensely. Indeed, she missed them all; their brief stay (entirely apart from the miraculous return of her brother) had been a delightful event in her life, and now with only the parrot to relieve her loneliness, it seemed as if the bottom had fallen out of things. Even the parrot reminded her of Roy, for when she told the bird that it was lonesome and slow at Shady Lawn, he replied, “You should worry!”—a phrase which he had never been known to use before.