"Oh," said Bonnie, "that's where that nice boy sat while we were taking the almost drowned man to the doctor's. Then we took the nice boy home—he was so wet and shivery."
"Take us there first, Jennings, then home."
The big car whirled swiftly back to Chance Carter's house. Bruce found Chance with his hair still wet, but triumphant. He was telling his father exactly how he wanted his new Safety Scout uniform made, patch pockets and all!
From him Bruce got the whole story, clear down to the scouting hints from Bob and Betty that had started him off that morning. The mill owner took Mr. Carter aside and made him promise to send the bill for that uniform to Bruce's Mills. "Where do this other boy and the girl live?" he asked, as he and Bonnie got back into the machine. "All right, Jennings, we'll stop there next."
"I think, sir," suggested Jennings, "that must be the same boy and girl we took home from Turner Hall last Fourth—the boy who put the splint on this other lad's broken leg, sir. It's the same house, anyway."
Sure enough, when they drew up at the curb, there were Bob and Betty in their Safety Scout uniforms, just going in to their birthday supper. They were going to have a big double cake, with lots of frosting and with twenty-four green candles on it—green for Safety, Betty explained—and they were so excited over having passed their examinations with such high marks, that it was some time before the big man could make them understand what he was getting at.
"What I want to know," persisted Bruce, "is how you ever came to put that Carter boy up to such a stunt as that. What difference did it make to you?"
"Why," Betty told him, "we simply had to help him get a start for his uniform and his Safety First button. But we couldn't do much because we didn't have time. You see this is our birthday, and we had to go for our examinations." Before Bruce left they had given him their whole story, too, and a good deal more than they had intended telling him, forgetting what Colonel Sure Pop had told Uncle Jack about the way Bruce had been holding back the Safety First work from Maine to California.
Bruce said little as he listened to their story, but he did some quick thinking. So this was the sort of thing he had fought so long and so stubbornly—this "Boost for Safety" talk which he had called "new-fangled theory," but to which he owed the life of his own little girl!
As they talked, two Scouts came into the front hall to remind the twins that their birthday supper was waiting, but Bruce was too interested to see them. Quick at reading signs, as all good Scouts are, Colonel Sure Pop and Uncle Jack watched and listened for a moment, then smilingly went back to the supper table.