Sure Pop laid an understanding hand on Chance's shoulder.
"Listen, Chance! You've caught only half the point, that's your main trouble. It is a manly thing to take a risk—when it's necessary. When somebody's life is in danger, it's the manliest thing on earth to take a risk for the sake of saving it. That's why Bob's act in patrolling the live wire earned him a Safety Scout button—the lives of those smaller boys were in danger, to say nothing of anybody else who might blunder across the wire just then—that's where the difference comes in."
"That's so. I never thought of it in just that way."
"I know you haven't. When you stop to think it over, you see it's a fellow's plain duty to take a chance when it's necessary, but it's downright foolish to do it on a dare. One thing about Bob's live-wire adventure I don't believe even he realizes," added Sure Pop. "It was that hurry-up patrol of small boys that he threw out around the live wire which really gave him the idea of how to organize the Safety Scouts of America. I knew the idea would strike him and Betty sooner or later."
Chance looked admiringly at the little Colonel. What a wise Scout he was, sure enough, as keen and clever at reading signs of the trail as any Indian fighter that ever stepped in deerskin!
The boy looked longingly after the Safety Scout Patrol, which was just starting off on an "observation hike," as Bob called it. Part of the training Bob had laid out for his men was an hour's brisk walk, after which each Safety Scout wrote out a list of the unsafe things he had noticed while "on the trail."
"There's one thing that stumps me, though," said Chance. "How did Bob know that was a live wire?"
"He didn't. He simply had sense enough to treat all fallen wires as if they were alive. See? Better safe than sorry. Just the same in turning on an electric light: it may not harm you to touch an iron bedstead with one hand while you turn the light on with the other—but it's taking a chance. Same's the fellow who turns an electric bulb on or off while standing in a bathtub: he may go on with his bath in safety—and then again he may drop lifeless in the water.
"It's a good deal like the gun that isn't loaded, Chauncey. There was a lad, you know, who found a gun was dangerous without lock, stock, or barrel—his father whipped him with the ramrod! A real Scout knows how to take care of himself—and of others. And that's especially true of Safety Scouts."
"Well, Colonel," said Chance, reaching for his crutches and rising painfully to his feet, "I'm for it! Perhaps if I make good, the fellows will quit calling me Chance and call me either Chauncey or Carter, I don't care which—but Chance makes me sick!"