“Make yourself homely, as Blakeley would say,” laughed Arnold, changing his seat.
“Suppose you fellows go and get some more willow,” said Garry. “Go ahead with what you were saying,” he added, as Raymond and Jeffrey obediently started off toward the lake. “I was afraid you might say something that I wouldn’t want Jeff to hear. I have to be awful careful with him.”
“Queer duck, isn’t he!”
“Not when you know how to handle him. My father was a doctor and I’ve often heard him tell about people like that. I think he’s got what they call amnesia or something like that. I’ve a kind of a hunch that his—er, this Mr. Waring took him up there in that woods so’s he could just live quiet and natural like and maybe get better. I’ve often heard my father talk about the woods being a medicine for the mind. Don’t you remember there was some old duffer of a king who was cured that way—in some forest or other? I guess Jeff’s a whole lot better than he was when he first came up here in the woods. From little things he says sometimes, I guess he was pretty bad at first. Ever take a flyer at carving birchbark? Look here, what Jeff and the kid have done. They’re fiends at it.”
Arnold looked at Garry curiously.
“I want to talk to you about this Tom Slade—this patrol business.”
“I thought you did.”
“Of course, I’m kind of an outsider—it’s none of my business—except that I happened to be the one to get your smudge signal. But, of course, I’ve heard all about you and the Bridgeboro fellows last year—what good friends you were and all, and how Tom Slade went up through that fire to your shack up there, and it seems a blamed shame that you’re not good friends now. We’re all here such a short time anyway——”
“Next Monday for us,” said Garry, ruefully.
“That’s just what I was thinking. The birthday dinner, then Sunday and then——”