The Boy Scout
A rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn.
Not because the copybooks tell you it deserves another, but in
spite of that pleasing possibility. If you are a true scout, until
you have performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You
are as unhappy as is the grown-up who has begun his day without
shaving or reading the New York Sun. But as soon as you have
proved yourself you may, with a clear conscience, look the world
in the face and untie the knot in your kerchief.
Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten
minutes past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one
dime to his sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the
first-run films at the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize
two of the nickel shows on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie
left to her. He was setting out for the annual encampment of
the Boy Scouts at Hunter's Island, and in the excitement of that
adventure even the movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie also could
be unselfish. With a heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made
a gesture which might have been interpreted to mean she was
returning the money.
"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You
saved it, and you ought to get the fun of it."
"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out
of the railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead
of at Pelham Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents
cheaper."
Sadie exclaimed with admiration:
"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!"
"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family.
"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie."
To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised
Sadie to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawk's
Last Stand," and fled down the front steps.
He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack,
from his hands swung his suit-case, and between his heavy stockings
and his "shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed
by blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl.
As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother
waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed him
enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the
news-stand nodded approval.
"You a scout, Jimmie?" he asked.
"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa
Claus out filling Christmas stockings."
The patrolman also possessed a ready wit.
"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your
legs--"
Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the
Elevated.
An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other,
he was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily.
The day was cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable
stretch of asphalt, the heat waves danced and flickered. Already
the knapsack on his shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man
of the Sea; the linen in the valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-
stem legs were wabbling, his eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the
fingers supporting the valise belonged to some other boy, and were
giving that boy much pain. But as the motor-cars flashed past with
raucous warnings, or, that those who rode might better see the boy
with bare knees, passed at "half speed," Jimmie stiffened his shoulders
and stepped jauntily forward. Even when the joy-riders mocked with
"Oh, you scout!" he smiled at them. He was willing to admit to those
who rode that the laugh was on the one who walked. And he regretted--
oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He was indignant that for his
"one good turn a day" he had not selected one less strenuous--that,
for instance, he had not assisted a frightened old lady through the
traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered, as all true scouts
refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn it by walking five
miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carrying excess baggage.
Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand, twenty times
he let it drop and sat upon it.
And then, as again he took up his burden, the good Samaritan drew
near. He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles
an hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and
backed toward him. The good Samaritan was a young man with white
hair. He wore a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel
were disguised in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and
surveyed the dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes.
"You a Boy Scout?" he asked.
With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise,
forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.
The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.
"Get in," he commanded.
When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to
Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit.
Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling
indignantly, crawled.
"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man.
"Tell me about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not
scouting."
Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office
boy, and from peddlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll
and Hastings, stock-brokers. He spoke the names of his employers
with awe. It was a firm distinguished, conservative, and long
established. The white-haired young man seemed to nod in assent.
"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a
customer of ours?"
"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine."
Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers
of the white-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments,
Jimmie guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a
haberdasher. Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his
mother at One Hundred and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister,
attended the public school; he helped support them both, and he
now was about to enjoy a well-earned vacation camping out on
Hunter's Island, where he would cook his own meals, and, if the
mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.
"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?"
"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't you go camping out?"
"I go camping out," said the good Samaritan, "whenever I leave
New York."
Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to
understand that the young man spoke in metaphor.
"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though
you were built for the strenuous life."
Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.
"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all
sunburnt and hard-
-hard as anything!"
The young man was incredulous.
"You were near getting sunstruck when I picked you up," he
laughed. "If you're going to Hunter's Island, why didn't you go
to Pelham Manor?"
"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save
the ten cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked."
The young man looked his embarrassment.
"I beg your pardon," he murmured.
But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was
dragging excitedly at the hated suit-case.
"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter walk."
The young man showed his surprise.
"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?"
Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It
took some time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be
told about the scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it
must involve some personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out,
changing from a slow suburban train to a racing-car could not be
listed as a sacrifice. He had not earned the money, Jimmie argued;
he had only avoided paying it to the railroad. If he did not walk
he would be obtaining the gratitude of Sadie by a falsehood.
Therefore, he must walk.
"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What
good will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you are
sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll
talk it over as we go along."
Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.
The young man shifted his legs irritably.
"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one
good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do me a good turn."
Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.
"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've
lost my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me
a good turn."
On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant
hands picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to
Hunter's Island Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.
"Much obliged," he called. "I got ter walk." Turning his back
upon temptation, he waddled forward into the flickering heat
waves.
The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road,
under the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and
with his arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with
frowning eyes the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested
and knock-kneed boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer
concerned him. It was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie,
and not only preached but before his eyes put into practice, that
interested him. The young man with white hair had been running
away from temptation. At forty miles an hour he had been running
away from the temptation to do a fellow mortal "a good turn." That
morning, to the appeal of a drowning Caesar to "Help me, Cassius,
or I sink," he had answered: "Sink!" That answer he had no wish to
reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had sought to escape.
It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power racing-machine is a
jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic
thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not escaped.
Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels, and set him again
to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled
past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and
leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as
though he sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and
stared at nothing. The half-hour passed and the young man swung
his car back toward the city. But at the first road-house that showed
a blue-and-white telephone sign he left it, and into the iron box at
the end of the bar dropped a nickel. He wished to communicate with
Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll
had just issued orders that he must not be disturbed, the young man
gave his name.
The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved
air of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully.
"What are you putting over?" he demanded.
The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and,
though apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing,
the barkeeper listened.
Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings
also listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private
offices, and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all
undertakings, is the most momentous. On the desk before him
lay letters to his lawyer, to the coroner, to his wife; and hidden
by a mass of papers, but within reach of his hand, was an
automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift release had
made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a feeling
of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought,
from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone
coughed discreetly, it was as though some one had called him
from a world from which already he had made his exit.
Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.
The voice over the telephone came in brisk, staccato sentences.
"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been
thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you
boys, and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a road-house
in the Bronx; going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin
to draw against us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions
see you through?"
From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the
barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.
The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.
"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."
"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.
The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay
for breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.
Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against
the mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.
"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing
in million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd
knowed it was him, I'd have hit him once and hid him in the
cellar for the reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was
a wire-tapper, working a con game!"
Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the
beer-glass crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from
the hand of the man who held it, and the man himself had fallen
forward. His desk hit him in the face and woke him--woke him
to the wonderful fact that he still lived; that at forty he had been
born again; that before him stretched many more years in which,
as the young man with the white hair had pointed out, he still
could make good.
The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and
Hastings were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour,
two of them were asked to remain. Into the most private of the
private offices Carroll invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the
main office Hastings had asked young Thorne, the bond clerk,
to be seated.
Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne
must remain seated.
"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run
this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have
happened. It hasn't happened, but we've had our lesson. And
after this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need
you to tell us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's
vacation. When I thought we were going under I planned to send the
children on a sea voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the
newspapers. But now that I can look them in the eye again, I need
them, I can't let them go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an
ocean trip to Nova Scotia and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved
for the kids. They call it the royal suite--whatever that is--and the trip
lasts a month. The boat sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late
or you may miss her."
The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of
his waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his
voice trembled.
"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from
Millie and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"
A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and
her husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge-bag
and a cure for seasickness.
Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her
knees, Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and
offering up incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she
sank back upon the floor.
"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a
'royal suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"
Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.
"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick now. The medicine I want is
to be taken later. I know I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the
Pavonia isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."
He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same
time," he suggested.
"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling
to-night in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes;
and our flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."
John nodded his head proudly.
"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all
the people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the
parks."
"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've
been married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall
bedroom and eating with all the other boarders. Think what our
flat would mean to them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms
and their own kitchen and bath, and our new refrigerator and the
gramophone! It would be heaven! It would be a real honeymoon!"
Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and
kissed her, for, next to his wife, nearest his heart was the
younger brother.
The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the
boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were
the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers.
The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose
exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the
smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall
bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice
was difficult.
"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying,
"or you won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas
or a trip on the Weehawken ferry-boat?"
"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from
all these people."
A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked
itself to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon
the pavement. They talked so fast, and the younger brother and
Grace talked so fast, that the boarders, although they listened
intently, could make nothing of it.
They distinguished only the concluding sentences:
"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the
elder brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"
But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.
"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"
An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the
head clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the
cooling murmur of running water and from his gramophone the
jubilant notes of "Alexander's Rag-time Band."
When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the
royal suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the
junior partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk.
He addressed him familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This
was due partly to the fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had
been christened Champneys and to the coincidence that he had
captained the football eleven of one of the Big Three to the
championship.
"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to
raise your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you
didn't deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise
you'd immediately get married."
The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he
snorted with indignation.
"And why should I not get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine
one to talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever
met."
"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the
junior partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a
wife."
"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make
it support a wife whether it supports me or not."
"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have promised you a
hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't
want you to rush off and marry some fine girl--"
"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The finest girl!"
"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would
have been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."
The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.
"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.
Hastings sighed happily.
"It was," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street
did us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes,
saved our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and
we agreed the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you.
You've brought us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us
we're going to 'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you
say?"
Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n
hell's my hat?"
But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his
manners.
"I say, 'Thank you a thousand times,"' he shouted over his
shoulder. "Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the
news to--"
He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but
Hastings must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then,
a little hysterically laughed aloud. Several months had passed
since he had laughed aloud.
In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his
neck. In his excitement he could not remember whether the red
flash meant the elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner
than wait to find out he started to race down eighteen flights of
stairs when fortunately the elevator-door swung open.
"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you
drop to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like
the building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the
roof falls."
Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter
Barbara, were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August
because there was a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and
Cuyaba Rubber Company, of which company Senator Barnes was
president. It was a secret meeting. Those directors who were
keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been summoned by
telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by wireless.
Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening,
grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only
an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment
it might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom
to let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give
the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out?
It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the
president had foregathered.
Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle
Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask
her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was
all he cared to know.
A year before he had issued his declaration of independence.
Before he could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a
wife on what he earned, without her having to accept money from
her father, and until he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand
dollars they must wait.
"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.
Thorne had evaded the direct question.
"There is too much of it," he said.
"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
galoshes. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoshes.
And what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat?"
Thorne shook his head unhappily.
"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
the way they get the raw material."
"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo.
There it is terrible! That is slavery. But there are no slaves on the
Amazon. The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap
the trees the way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has
told me about it often."
Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the
friend were among those present, but denouncing any one he
disliked as heartily as he disliked Senator Barnes was a public
service he preferred to leave to others. And he knew besides that
if the father she loved and the man she loved distrusted each
other, Barbara would not rest until she learned the reason why.
One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities,
of the Indian slaves in the jungles and backwaters of the Amazon,
who are offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the
paper to her father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue,
and if it were true it was the first he had heard of it.
Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he
loved most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was
her good opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in
doubt, he assured her he at once would order an investigation.
"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our
agents can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."
In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.
"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."
That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba
Rubber Company were summoned to meet their president at his
rooms in the Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour,
and while Senator Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to
him. In her eyes was a light that helped to tell the great news. It
gave him a sharp, jealous pang. He wanted at once to play a part
in her happiness, to make her grateful to him, not alone to this
stranger who was taking her away. So fearful was he that she
would shut him out of her life that had she asked for half his
kingdom he would have parted with it.
"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which
no one seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make
her remember her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head,
or pearls to hang around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot
on Fifth Avenue?"
The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely
face was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little
frightened.
"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara.
The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of
the senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into
outer darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily:
"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?"
The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened,
still searched his in appeal.
"Then, for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take
that million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I
will choose the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or
sudden death; not afraid to tell the truth--even to you. And all the
world will know. And they--I mean you--will set those people free!"
Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which
he concealed under a manner of just indignation.
"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot
continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an
expedition across South America. It will investigate, punish, and
establish reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we
do now adjourn."
That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or
nearly all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And
together on tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at
their sleeping children. When she rose from her knees the mother
said: "But how can I thank him?"
By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street.
"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it."
But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a
photograph of the children. Do you think he will understand?"
Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken
garden. The moon was so bright that the roses still held their
color.
"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the
Young Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost this."
Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide,
hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these
roses," said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean
our home?"
At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence,
Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a
taxicab.
"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted
Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings,
Mr. Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have
asked me to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you,
father would not have given me a wedding-present, and--"
"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would
still be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and
children and the light of the sun and their fellow men. They
still would be dying of fever, starvation, tortures."
He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against
his lips.
"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom
comes, that they owe it all to you."
On Hunter's Island, Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges,
each on his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight,
and the mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep.
"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving
that dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded."
"He would not!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth;
"it wasn't deep enough."
"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said
it was the best 'one good turn' of the day!"
Modestly Sam shifted the lime-light so that it fell upon his
bunkie.
"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "your 'one good turn' was a
better one!"
Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully.
"Me!" he scoffed. "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the
movies."
-THE END-
Richard Harding Davis' short story: The Boy Scout
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