“Oh, that’s nothing, Lige,” Hugh remarked lightly, as he turned away. “We were glad to be on hand to help out, though I guess you’d have smothered the fire yourself, even if we hadn’t happened along.”
“I don’t know ’bout that,” muttered Lige, frowning. “When I tackled her one place, she got boomin’ again in another; and I didn’t know how on earth I was goin’ to manage. Anyhow, my aunt, she’s obliged to both of you fellers. So-long!”
As he and Alec rode along the road again, after washing the smut from their faces at the well, Hugh found himself wondering whether this little incident might have any bearing on a change of heart on the part of Lige Corbley. He knew what a consistent hater the other could be, and how deep-rooted, though unreasonable, his detestation of the Boy Scouts was.
“I’m afraid it will take a lot more than that to make him alter his mind about scouts,” he said. And Alec, quick to understand what must be passing through his mind, was not at all slow to remark:
“Yes, that’s what I think, too, Hugh. He’s been nursing this feeling for the lot of us so long that he actually believes he is right, and that we’re a silly bunch. What he said was forced out of him unwillingly, I could see. He kept watching you out of the corner of his eye, as though he couldn’t just make you out. Nothing will come of the little affair. We’ve had an adventure, and there’s some satisfaction in knowing we had a chance to do a good deed. Somehow I haven’t turned my badge to-day, and now I think I’ve got a good right to do it.”
“I should say you had,” laughed Hugh. “I make it a regular practice to find something to do for somebody right early in the morning, so as to get it off my mind. Though for that matter, there’s no reason we shouldn’t perform twenty kind acts during each day, and we will, too, if the thing has become real to us, and not just a meaningless service to carry out a set rule. But it’s good to start right. It gets to be a sort of clock-work performance with you, once you fall into the rut. But let’s talk now about what we mean to do to-night if the majority is in favor of it. I never felt more stirred up than I do right now; for this town needs purging if any city ever did, in more ways than one. Mark what I say, Alec, once we get started there will crop up all sorts of openings through which the place can be improved. If my plan takes with the boys of the troop to-night, the good people around will have something to talk about at breakfast time to-morrow morning.”
CHAPTER IV.
WILLING WORKERS.
Long before eight o’clock that night the boys had gathered at their meeting-place, which was now in the basement of one of the churches, where they were promised a new gymnasium for the coming winter season.
When the roll was called, just twenty-nine responded to their names, showing that whatever Billy had told them over the wire, it must have excited their curiosity considerably. There was a buzz of excitement all over the room when, the regular business finished, Hugh started to explain the plan of campaign that had appealed to Billy and himself that very afternoon.
He led up to it by telling about the terrible condition of the streets almost everywhere about town.