Wilfred.
P. S. The four leaf clover and the opal don’t speak to each other.
Wilfred liked the Elks so much that he did not ask any of them to walk down to Terryville with him where he intended to mail his letter. He wanted to walk there alone and think about his little triumph among them. They had fallen for him, as the saying is, and the realization of this was a balm to his spirit. One could not say the Ravens had not been good enough scouts to seek him out and find his winsome nature; they had been too scoutlike (as one might say) for that. That is, they were too busy with scouting. Now he was a decidedly large fish in a small pond. He was the “big thing” in the struggling Elk Patrol.
He wanted to feast upon his success with them, to let his imagination bask in the sunshine of this new favor that was his, after the ordeal of ridicule and disgrace. He felt so much at home with them! He was at his best with them. Well, there is a place for every fellow, if he can only find it. Wilfred wanted to indulge these solacing thoughts and that is why he walked down to Terryville alone.
But there was another reason. Terryville was a perilous place where scouts bought ice cream sodas and cones and candy. They treated each other to these. The Elks, however humble their standing in scout lore and prowess, were not remiss in these convivial obligations. Charlie O’Conner was notably prodigal on his pilgrimages to the rural center of iniquity. Wilfred had no money at all except his five dollar bill and this he wanted to save for a scout outfit. He would not let the others treat him. They liked him so much that he was afraid if he asked one they all might go. Then, he would have to let one after another treat him. So he went alone.
At Terryville something occurred which was destined to have a bearing on his future. Along the village thoroughfare he paused to look in a window where, among other varieties of apparel, scout raiment and paraphernalia were displayed.
He was gazing wistfully at these things when the sudden noise of a quickly braked automobile caused him to turn about, and he beheld an all too common sight. An old man, having just escaped being run down, had returned to the curb where he stood gazing intently at the procession of cars in the forlorn hope that he might discover a gap where a second attempt might be made. One after another the heedless motorists sped past in complacent disdain of this little village which chanced to be upon the state highway. If the village itself had wanted to cross the road it would probably have fared no better than the bewildered old man. Again and again he stepped from the curb and back again. Yet this old man had fought his way across harder places than this in his time.
Approaching the baffled pedestrian, Wilfred took him gently by the arm, raised his right hand warningly, then started across the street with his tottering charge, without apparently so much as a glance at the hurrying traffic. There was another squeak of quickly applied brakes and the shiny bumper of a car all but touched Wilfred’s leg. But the car stood, and likewise the car behind it stood, and a man in a dilapidated Ford behind that who tried (as Ford drivers will) to make a flank move stopped also, and caused a jam in approaching traffic. But the Grand Army passed triumphantly across!
CHAPTER XX
ANOTHER PROMISE
The old man was very shrunken and feeble and like most aged people he had an impersonal way about him as though he saw the world but not its people individually. He seemed to take Wilfred for granted. He did not allude to the difficulty of crossing the street.