“Say, how do you get that way, Willie?” And by way of completing his scornful amusement he cast tacks, paper and pencil to the ground.
He did not have to stoop to pick them up, for like a flash of lightning he went sprawling on the ground himself. Speechless, aghast with amazement, he raised himself, holding one hand against a mud-bespattered ear. And in that brief moment he saw more stars than ever boy scout studied in the bespangled firmament.
“Hey, what’s the idea?” he demanded in a tone of injured innocence.
“Pick up the pencil and the tacks,” said Wilfred coldly. “I’ll give you another piece of paper; pick them up, quick. You fellows keep away from here.”
For a moment Edgar Coleman paused; then, all too late for his dignity, he saw that half-closed, quivering eye, loaded with a kind of cold concentration. He felt of his bleeding ear and glanced down at his mud-smeared clothes. He was about to make an issue of this incidental damage, but a good discretion (prompted by that quivering eye) deterred him from debate or comment.
“What do you say?” asked Wilfred grimly.
“I suppose you’re going to tell everybody,” Edgar Coleman ventured.
“I’m not going to tell anybody about this,” said Wilfred, “and I’m sorry about your clothes. I’m not so sorry about your ear; you’d better put some iodine on it,” he added. “Everybody’ll know that you apologized to me and that’s all they need to know. All you have to know is that I do things just when I happen to want to do them. I just as soon be good friends with you after this. If your patrol doesn’t tell, I won’t. Here’s another piece of paper and you might as well make the apology so everybody’ll understand it; just tack it on the board. If it leaves everybody guessing I don’t care. Have you got some iodine?”
CHAPTER XXVIII
VOICES
When Wilfred mentioned to Tom Slade that there were “two of them” whom he blamed, he referred, of course, to Edgar Coleman. The other was Charlie O’Conner. He bitterly resented Charlie’s origination of the nickname Abandon Duty Cowell, because it seemed to involve his sister. But he realized that from the standpoint of the Elks he had abandoned his duty and he could not (indeed he did not have it in his heart) subject Charlie to the same bizarre style of discipline that the astonished Coleman had suffered. So he kept away from the Elks.