“There are, I believe, a few remembrances and these it shall be his pleasure to bring forward. I present to you,” he added, smiling, “the most silvery fox of them all, Roy Blakeley.”
“Why pick on me?” said Roy. “I thought I was going to be the buttered toast master, but it seems I’m to be the souvenir slinger. I should worry. I go where duty calls, and I wouldn’t run after any job—especially if it’s a good runner.
“Scouts and sprouts,” he continued, with a sly glance at Pee-wee; “now you’re supposed to say, ‘Hear, hear!’”
“Hear, hear!” they called, laughingly.
“I thank you. There are several things for the Honorable Tomasso Slade, otherwise known as Thomas the Silent, or Sherlock Nobody Holmes of Bridgeboro, N. G. Tomasso Slade is a home-made scout—I mean a self-made scout—and he’s made so as he can’t smile.” (He was beginning to smile however.) “The first present is from his boyhood’s friend, Roy Blakeley (that’s me) and it is intended to make him laugh.”
He handed across the table a turkey feather with a bow of ribbon tied about it. “And this,” he added, lifting the huge elk’s head to the board and smiling at Tom’s surprise, “is from Mr. Rushmore; its history, by Mr. Rushmore himself, is writ, wrot, wrote—on that piece of paper tied to the horns.”
Tom lifted the panel with the noble head and magnificent antlers and as the boys crowded about him he could only look toward Jeb with his eyes swimming.
“That’s all right, Tommy,” smiled Jeb, as pleased as Tom himself.
The cat’s collar belt was handed over amid much laughter, and various other small tokens, some humorous and all of a kind easily made or procurable in the woodland community. The wireless set almost knocked Tom off his feet, and when it was followed by the bugle with the Elk patrol names engraved upon it, he was overwhelmed.
Thomas Slade