“I’m sending them and an article to the magazines,” said Tim. “This time I’m T. L. Paul. Sometimes I used to pretend all the different people I am were talking together—but now I talk to you instead, Peter.”
“Will it bother the cats if I smoke? Thanks. Nothing I’m likely to set on fire, I hope? Put the house together and let me sit here and look at it. I want to look in through the windows. Put its lights on. There.”
The young architect beamed, and snapped on the little lights.
“Nobody can see in here. I got Venetian blinds; and when I work in here, I even shut them sometimes.”
“If I’m to know all about you, I’ll have to go through the alphabet from A to Z,” said Peter Welles. “This is Architecture. What else in the A’s?”
“Astronomy. I showed you those articles. My calculations proved correct. Astrophysics—I got A in the course, but haven’t done anything original so far. Art, no. I can’t paint or draw very well, except mechanical drawing. I’ve done all the Merit Badge work in scouting, all through the alphabet.”
“Darned if I can see you as a Boy Scout,” protested Welles.
“I’m a very good Scout. I have almost as many badges as any other boy my age in the troop. And at camp I do as well as most city boys.”
“Do you do a good turn every day?”
“Yes,” said Timothy. “Started that when I first read about Scouting—I was a Scout at heart before I was old enough to be a Cub. You know, Peter, when you’re very young, you take all that seriously about the good deed every day, and the good habits and ideals and all that. And then you get older and it begins to seem funny and childish and posed and artificial, and you smile in a superior way and make jokes. But there is a third step, too, when you take it all seriously again. People who make fun of the Scout Law are doing the boys a lot of harm; but those who believe in things like that don’t know how to say so, without sounding priggish and platitudinous. I’m going to do an article on it before long.”