“Yes—because it didn’t seem right—sort of. But now he’s here alone with us, I suppose he’ll join one of the troops and I’d like to have him join my patrol because I need one more member and I think he’ll be good on stalking and I want a stalking badge in my patrol. Maybe he could come back and live in Bridgeboro somewhere if his uncle should——”
“Surely, Tom,” said Mr. Ellsworth, quick to prevent him from finishing his sentence.
“I don’t mean I want it just as a reward—’cause I don’t think I did anything special. But I got just one more member to get and——”
There was a slight movement in the group and Jeffrey Waring brushed past the others and grasped Garry’s arm.
“I want to be in his club,” said he, looking almost imploringly at Mr. Ellsworth. “I want to join his class; he can send a message even better than a pigeon can take it, and it’s sure to get there. He can do it just with smoke. I want to join his class.”
He was greatly excited, as he always became when he talked and Garry winking significantly at the Bridgeboro Troop’s scoutmaster, strolled away with Jeffrey clinging to him and Raymond following.
Tom Slade stood motionless, stolid, and said not a word. Then, in a moment, Roy Blakeley went over and stood beside him, resting his arm on Tom’s shoulder.
Once, a couple of years before, when Tom was a hoodlum and John Temple was an old grouch, the capitalist had strode down through a field where Tom was trespassing, shouting threats and imprecations at the waif, whose first impulse was to run. Turning to do so, he had found Roy Blakeley, scout, standing by him, and had felt Roy’s arm on his shoulder. And Tom Slade, hoodlum, did not run. Goodness, it seems like ancient history now, with Tom head of a patrol and “Old Man” Temple founder and trustee of the big Temple Camp!
But Mr. Ellsworth and Doc Carson and Westy and others of the Ravens and Silver Foxes, remembered, and they noticed how Roy Blakeley stepped forward now and put his arm over Tom’s shoulder, just as he had then.
“You should worry, Tomasso,” they heard him say in an undertone.