“That goes, then, and meet at the church as before. By the way, Mr. Assistant Scout Master, although it’s only seven o’clock, you’ll be interested to know that I’m wearing my badge right-side up already. Haven’t missed connections now for twelve days; but it never came so early in the morning before.”
“Good for you, Arthur; how did it happen?” asked Hugh, always interested in anything that had to do with the application of scout principles. “Help the hired girl up with a bucket of coal, or run an errand for the folks?”
“Well, I did go on an errand before breakfast, but as that is a part of my regular home duties I never count it as worth while mentioning. I’d be pretty small to change my badge on that account. It was this way, Hugh. I have to go for milk, you see, because we get our supply now from old Mrs. Grady. She keeps just one cow, and it helps her out to sell all she can spare; but she’s so crippled with the rheumatics that she can’t walk much and people have to come to her. Are you listening, Hugh?”
“Sure I am; go right along, Arthur, but cut the story short. I think I’m wanted about now to carry a message downtown for my mother. What happened?”
“Why, it isn’t much to tell. You know the Sprawl family that live in the old shack down near the blacksmith shop? The man is a cobbler when he cares to work at all, and there are about forty-eleven youngsters flocking around the door all the time, barefooted and dirty.”
“Yes, I’ve often carried them things from our house,” Hugh assured him.
“Well, I came on one of the little Sprawl girls a-cryin’ on the road and searching in the grass. She carried an old battered pitcher in her hand, and when I asked her what was the matter she said she had been sent for five cents’ worth of milk and had lost the money. You ought to have seen how her face lighted up through the tears and the dirt when I drew out a nickel and gave it to her! Guess that entitled me to turn my badge, even if it wasn’t much, didn’t it, Chief?”
“I should say it did, and you’ll get a heap more satisfaction out of remembering the look on that little girl’s face than you’d ever have had from spending your nickel for a glass of soda water. But I’ll have to break away, Arthur. Look for us at one, alongside the church. I have a few stunts for us to practice while up there among the cliffs of the mountainside. So-long!”
When Hugh had attended to his errand downtown, he walked around to the sporting-goods store, in the window of which was exposed the handsome silk banner which had been offered by a leading gentleman of the town as a prize to the patrol winning the highest number of points in the competition that had been arranged by the efficient Scout Master.
There was hardly a time throughout each day that one or more lads did not have their noses pressed against the glass of that window, while they indulged in all manner of talk and speculations concerning the possible destination of that beautiful prize.