“Lead the way, Hugh,” proposed Walter Osborn. “We’ve taken to your scheme like ducks to water, and the sooner we get busy the better it’ll please a lot of us. I’m really getting rusty for want of something to do besides study, now school has begun. Fall in, everybody, and don’t forget your bags.”
“Now we know why Billy told us to fetch these bags along,” remarked Sam Winter. “We are to stuff the waste paper in them, so we can carry it to some central place. Is that the idea, Hugh?”
“Yes. We’ll put several of the collecting cans in a bunch near the middle of the little park, and in the morning the dump man can take the trash away,” the scout master informed him.
“Too bad we couldn’t make a big bonfire and burn it all up,” grumbled Billy. “I’d feel better if that ended the affair, because—Oh, well, if the rest of you think it will be all right to leave it there, I’m not going to kick. How many of you fetched a broom along?”
It was found that, all told, there were seven brooms in the party, eight hoes, half a dozen shovels, and two rakes. When this curious assortment of implements had been shouldered by the enthusiastic boys, they looked like a corps of gardeners about to begin work on some public ground.
Two by two the scouts marched out of their meeting-room and headed for the open plaza not far away, where the grass was green and many bushes and flowers grew. The spot had really lost much of its beauty through the habit most people had formed of throwing aside all sorts of rubbish. In certain quarters of town it was not an unusual sight to see, perhaps, an old coal scuttle, cast-off shoes, or even a rusty hot-water boiler reposing in the gutter as though that were the ordinary place for such derelicts.
As the scouts crossed the main street in order to reach the little park, some people stood and stared. A few gave them a faint cheer, though unable to understand what the parade could be for. Doubtless they imagined that it might only be a prank on the part of the boys, since they carried garden tools and brooms in place of guns.
When they reached the small park, Hugh began to give his orders. He knew every foot of that ground and had already planned the attack in his mind.
Dividing it into four equal parts, he assigned one to each of the three patrols besides his own. After that, it was up to the leaders to see that their workers did their part in the undertaking.
First of all, several of the tall waste paper cans, which nobody ever thought of using any more, were deposited near the center of the open space. There was one for each patrol, and immediately the scouts busied themselves in collecting the worst of the accumulated trash, depositing it in the receptacles where it should have lodged long since.