“That? That’s Mr. Rushmore’s cabin. He has charge of the grounds—all of ’em, even the coffee grounds.”
“What?” said Jeffrey.
“And the next cabin,” said Roy, “belongs to the Elks—Tom Slade.”
“I don’t like him so much,” said Jeffrey.
“You don’t, hey? Well, you might have got into a regular patrol,” said Roy, busy with his work. “It was up to you.”
Not having been of the party which rescued Jeffrey, and hence not having had the same opportunity to observe him, Roy was not as patient with him as some of the others.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, wheeling about and becoming serious. “Don’t you know who you’ve got to thank for getting you out of your scrape? Don’t you know who saved you from starving up there? What’s the matter with you, anyway? I know fellows who’d be glad of the chance to get into the Elk Patrol. They’ve got the gold cross in that patrol, let me tell you—and sixteen merit badges! And you, like a big chump, pass it up, and run after that pair that isn’t any patrol at all! Let me tell you something, my fraptious boy, in case you should ever get to be a scout——”
“I am a scout,” said Jeffrey, and doubtless he thought he was.
“There’s a little old book with a red cover you’ve got to take a squint into before you’re a B. S., let me tell you. And it’s got some good dope about making sacrifices and being generous and you can’t be a good scout walking away with somebody else’s prize—you can’t! You tell your patrol leader, or whatever you call him, to look in that little old Handbook and see if he finds anything there that’ll give him the right to put one over on the fellow that found you and brought you here; and the fellow that saved his own life, too! Hand me that other branch, Pee-wee.”
Jeffrey could only stare.