"We ain't showing him anything; he's showing us."
It was an afternoon never to be forgotten by the Blue Tortoise Patrol, and it was an equally memorable one for Pat. And when they parted that night there was a mutual respect and liking which found expression in the hearty grip of Scout brotherhood.
CHAPTER V
OFF FOR WOODCRAFT
Edward Muldoon, otherwise Sparrer, surreptitiously pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming. He, newsboy from the lower East Side of New York, who had never been farther from it than Coney Island, riding in a brilliantly lighted Pullman coach on his way into the great woods of which he had dreamed so much since he became a Scout, and of which he had only the vaguest idea! It couldn't be.
And yet it was. The roar of the wheels told him that it was. The very feel of the luxurious seat in which he was sitting told him that it was. And to clinch the fact and at the same time make it harder to believe there were his three companions, Upton, his patrol leader, Harrison and Pat Malone, whom he had secretly made his hero. Yes, it was all true, and yet he couldn't get rid of the idea that sooner or later he would wake up and find it all a beautiful dream.
The fact is, this trip was in the nature of a Christmas present. From their first meeting Pat had taken a great fancy to the street gamin. He recognized a kindred spirit. Instinctively he realized that the difference between Sparrer and himself at the same age was mainly one of environment. The youngster's sturdy independence and self-reliance, his quick wit, even his impudence, struck responsive chords in the young woodsman. Sparrer was what he himself would have been had his nursery been a New York East Side tenement instead of the log cabin of a mill settlement in the lumber district of the North Woods.
The night after the motor accident the three older boys had been discussing Sparrer and his prompt resourcefulness. Pat dropped a remark that he wished with all his heart that he could have the youngster in the woods with him for a couple of weeks.
"Let's take him with us! It would be no end of fun," cried Hal on the spur of an inspiration.