“There’ll be others here to take our places though,” finished Garry.
“And I was wondering,” continued Arnold, “if we couldn’t kind of straighten things up before that. You know, ever since that first night I’ve sort of hung out with the Bridgeboro fellows. Gordon and I are here on our own hook and he sort of stands in with Pee-wee—and, oh, I don’t know, Tom and Blakeley sort of got me. That first night when you fellows were up the hill Blakeley spieled off a lot of stuff at campfire. He told us all about their trip up in the motor-boat last year and about the fellow that used to own it—how he lost his life. Funny though, how that part of the rowboat got back to the launch, wasn’t it? I guess Tom’s notion doesn’t amount to much, though. Anyway, that’s what ‘our beloved scoutmaster’ as Roy calls him, seems to think.”
“Mr. Ellsworth?”
“Yes. He says Tom’s got a little vein of the dime novel in him—‘Back From Death’ or the ‘Mystery of the Busted Dory’ as Roy says. He calls Tom Sherlock Nobody Holmes.”
“I guess nobody understands Tom Slade very well,” said Garry.
“I suppose maybe that’s just the reason the troop makes such a lot of him. If you played—if somebody played a mean trick on—on—Doc Carson, for instance, the fellows wouldn’t be so sore about it. But when you put one over on Tom you hit them all.”
“Do you think I play mean tricks?” queried Garry, beginning to carve a willow stick.
“I didn’t say that. But you can see Tom is a favorite and anybody with two squinters in his head, surely any scout, can see why. He came out of the slums and he’s poor and in some ways he’s different from these fellows. They’re all rich fellows and pretty well educated—you know what I mean. They made him a scout, and they’re always on the watch for fear he’ll see some difference. They’re proud of him because he’s made good and they’re going to see to it that the scouts make good. They want him to have all that’s coming to him just because he hasn’t got some things that they’ve got—you understand, don’t you?”
“I think I come pretty near knowing what it is to be poor,” said Garry, whittling.
“Well, these fellows here have been pretty decent to you, too, first and last, haven’t they?”