"Not exactly Boy Scouts," chuckled Sure Pop with a wink at Bob, "unless you count us boys till we're ninety-nine years old! Girls are scouts, too, in my regiment."
"Now, Betty," warned Bob, "sit down here and don't you dare interrupt, for Sure Pop's right in the middle of a story—and I think he's come to stay a while, haven't you, Sure Pop?"
"Sure pop! I'll stay as long as the King will let me," laughed the merry little scout.
"Well, after I got away from the crowd," he went on, "my eyes must suddenly have been opened to the thousand-and-one things that might happen even in Borderland to folks who didn't look sharp on the street, for on my way home I saved several others from getting hurt.
"The first was a careless little cabin boy, who went along whistling with his hands in his pockets. He slipped and fell plump in front of a chariot, and of course he couldn't jerk his hands out of his pockets in time to save himself. I grabbed him up in the very nick of time, or he'd have been smashed flatter than a pancake.
"And only a block farther on, I met a carpenter hurrying through the crowd with a ladder on his shoulder. Some one shouted to him, and he whirled around with never a thought of his ladder. The end of it would have hit a fat old banker squarely between the eyes if I hadn't been watching for that very thing and caught it as it swung. I went home and thought no more about all this, till that night, at midnight, I was summoned before the King."
"The King!" cried Betty. "My, weren't you scared?"
"I was, sure pop! When I marched into the throne room it was crowded with richly dressed people. The King and Queen sat on their thrones, and as I went toward them I had to pass between two long lines of trumpeters.
"Suddenly up went the silver trumpets, and the trumpeters blew a mighty blast. Let me tell you, it was enough to send the shivers down your spine, that trumpet call was! It seemed as if I never had climbed a longer flight of steps. But at last I found myself bowing before the King and Queen. The King, who wore a brand new uniform, just like this one I have on, beckoned a herald to his side.
"'Now hark to his words,' he said to me, 'and say if he speaks the truth.' And then the herald read aloud from a long white scroll, with scarlet seals on it, the story of how I had saved the young chap from the chariot that noon, and all about the cabin boy and the fat old banker I'd helped on my way home!