"Perhaps."
She disappeared into the little inner office where Mr. Burton was waiting to dictate his mail, and Tom strolled over to the big window which overlooked Barrel Alley and gazed down upon that familiar, sordid place.
It was a long road from that squalid tenement down there to a place on the committee which was to receive the governor of the state. Over there to the left, next to Barrey's junk shop, was poor Ching Wo's laundry, into which Tom had hurled muddy barrel staves. And that brick house with the broken window was where "Slats" Corbett, former lieutenant of Tom's gang, had lived.
A big lump came up in his throat as he thought over the whole business now and of where the scout trail had brought him. Oh, he was happy!
The bright spring sunshine which poured in through the window on that wonderful morning, the flags which waved gayly here and there, seemed to reflect his own joy, and he was overwhelmed with the sense of triumph.
"That was a good trail I hit, all right," he said to himself. He could not have said it out loud without his voice breaking.
One thing he wished in those few minutes of exultation. He wished that his mother might be there to see him on the stage, a conspicuous part of that patriotic demonstration, with the Gold Cross of the scouts upon his left breast. That would make the cup of joy overflow.
But since that could not be, the next best thing would be the knowledge that Margaret Ellison would be sitting there in the third row, looking ever so pretty, and would see him, and notice the Gold Cross and wonder what it meant.
"I'm glad I never wore it to the office," he mused.
And Roscoe Bent, with all his sprightly manners and fine airs, would see where this good scout trail, which he had ridiculed, had brought Tom.