Stanton's grim visage relaxed into an unwilling, but unmistakable,
smile.
"And another thing I heard scared me, but----"
Tom, seeing where Pee-wee was drifting, tried to stop him, but Roy,
knowing that Pee-wee always managed to land on top, and seeing the smile
on Mr. Stanton's forbidding countenance, encouraged him to go on, and
presently the mascot of the Silver Foxes was holding the floor.
"A scout has to deduce--that's one of the things we learn, and if you
heard somebody called 'Old Man Something-or-other,' why, you'd deduce
something from it, wouldn't you? And you'd be kind of scared-like. But
even if you deduce that a man is going to be mad and gruff, kind of,
even still you got to remember that you're a scout and if you damaged
his property you got to go and tell him, anyway. You got to go and tell
him even if you go to jail. Don't you see? Maybe you don't know much
about the scouts----"
"No," said Mr. Stanton, "I'm afraid I don't. But I'm glad to know that I
am honored by a nickname--even so dubious a one. Do you think you were
correct in your deductions?" he added.
"Well, I don't know," began Pee-wee. "I can see--well, anyway there's
another good thing about a scout--he's got to admit it if he's wrong."
Mr. Stanton laughed outright. It was a rusty sort of laugh, for he did
not laugh often--but he laughed.
"The only things I know about Boy Scouts," said he, "I have learned in
the last twenty-four hours. You tell me that they can convert an
exhaust pipe into a stove flue, and I have learned they can bring a
bird down out of a tree without so much as a bullet or a stone (I have
to believe what my little daughter tells me), and that they take the
road where they think trouble awaits them on account of a
principle--that they walk up to the cannon's mouth, as it were--I am a
very busy man and no doubt a very hard and disagreeable one, but I can
afford to know a little more about these scouts, I believe.
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