"You'd laugh to know who was the first Scout enrolled. As I slipped out of the poison-bottle house, I saw a funny little pigmy hurry out of a cottage across the lane and go z-z-zam! down the front steps. We'd had a nip of frost the night before, and the slippery steps took him by surprise. For a moment he stood rubbing his head, with his merry little face puckered up into a comical sort of bowknot. Then he picked his way slowly up the steps into the house.
"A minute or two and out he came again with a bag of salt and sprinkled the steps with it. Though he was in just as big a hurry as our friend the wizard, the Safety First idea had got him, and he plainly had made up his mind to begin right then and there.
"'Well, I declare!' I said to myself. 'I've a notion to muster him into the scouting service—but what would the King say to my enrolling a pigmy?' Just as I was wondering about it, down he went again, flat on his little back!
"This time it was on the sidewalk in front of his house. Some careless youngster had thrown a banana skin on the walk. Poor little pigmy, what a bump he did get that time! But again he picked himself up, and this time he didn't wait a moment—just poked the banana skin off into the gutter where it could do no more harm.
"Such persistence was too much for me! I told him the King wanted him for the royal army of Safety Scouts, and that he was to have the honor of being the first one enrolled. His eyes fairly popped out of his head as he listened, and before you could say 'Jack Robinson,' he had scampered off to help me raise an army—with one of these buttons in the lapel of his leather jerkin."
Sure Pop pulled a sparkling button out of his pocket and laid it before the twins.
"There, that's the Safety Scouts' badge of honor, and no Scout can wear one till he earns the right. The King himself designed it."
"My! I wish—!" The twins remembered their manners and stopped short, but Sure Pop understood. He threw back that wise little head and how he did laugh!
"You wish—eh? That's what they all say, the minute they lay eyes on that button! You see, that's a magic button, so it's no wonder everybody wants one. Friends, that button can talk!"