“Take that news home to your mother as a Christmas present, Joe,” said Mr. Rogers.
Then he turned to Tom. “And you, Tom, gave the present of health to Joe. How do you like giving instead of receiving?”
“Giving? Giving nothing!” Tom exclaimed. “Don’t you make any mistake. I received more pleasure seeing old Joey get fat and strong than I’ll ever give anybody!”
“That’s what I like to hear a scout say,” Mr. Rogers smiled, putting an arm over each boy’s shoulder, and hanging his weight on them, to feel how sturdy they were. Neither flinched an inch, but stood up like hickory posts.
Joe’s Christmas present from Tom—the mysterious bundle he bought in Chicago—was a developing tank and all the chemicals. Joe also received from Lucy Elkins, on Christmas day, a beautiful enlargement of a view of Gunsight Lake and Mount Jackson, to hang in his room. For the next few days he and Tom toiled over the tank, developing their endless rolls of film, and then, when these were printed, they gave an exhibition at the scout house.
But it was several days before they went into the woods.
“Gee, it’s too much like a prairie ’round here,” Tom said, casting a contemplative glance at their eighteen-hundred-foot mountain.
Finally, however, just before school commenced, they put on snow-shoes, and tramped over a mean little eight inches of snow to the top of their highest hill, out on a ledge above the trees. Southmead lay below them, with all its roofs and steeples gathered in the snowy fields like a herd of cattle. The woods were still.
“It’s not the Rockies,” said Tom, “but it’s pretty nice at that, and we’ll get out the old rope on this baby cliff in the spring.”
“It’s home,” said Joe, “and I’m well again, and can go to school, and help mother, and study for the forestry service with you, and—and—oh, Spider, you’re the best friend a fellow ever had!”