“By-by, baby.”
“The sooner the quicker.”
Wilfred’s sensitive nature construed these stray bits of comments to mean something about himself; he thought that perhaps he had been dismissed from camp.
“Any time,” he heard a laughing voice say.
“A lot we care!”
“Willie or won’t he?”
“He ought to be named Won’t he.”
This was enough for Wilfred—he had been dismissed from camp. He had not fulfilled the requirements of the “scholarship” of which Tom Slade had spoken. He had not made good as a non-pay scout. He could not pass that spot now, unconscious of the mocking throng. His sensitiveness overcame his common sense. He took a circuitous route and avoiding his own cabin strolled up through the woods to the road. The habit of ambling had become second nature to him and “taking it easy” gave him an appearance of aimlessness which put him in strange contrast with the strenuous life all about him. There was something pathetic in his self-imposed isolation.
At the roadside was a crude bench where the camp people waited for the Catskill bus, and Wilfred seated himself on this. Soon the bus came along bringing a “shipment” of new scouts. Doc Loquez, the young camp physician, alighted too, hatless and conspicuous in his white jacket; he had evidently been to Catskill.
Wilfred lived in perpetual dread of this brisk young man, fearing that if he encountered him he would be ordered to bed or given a big bottle of medicine which people might see at the “eats” boards or in patrol cabin. But he was in for it now. The doc gave him a quick, inquiring glance and sat on the bench beside him.