THE SHERO

One thing about scouts—I mean two things about them. They always keep their words and they always keep their appetites—you can ask anybody.

I said, “Bring down a bottle of shoe-blacking with a sponge brush and we’ll let the whole World know that you’re a hero, I mean a shero.”

She said, “First we’re going to have refreshments.”

I said, “No, first we’re going to give you credit.”

She just laughed and she said, “No, because it’s my father’s house.”

I said, “That’s not your fault. If that butler was in my house he’d scare the life out of me just the same. I hope you never feed him meat. Even if I met him at the Peace Conference he’d scare me.”

So two or three of those girls went upstairs and got a bottle of shoe blacking and a big piece of cardboard. It was the cover of a box a suit comes in. I printed on it good and plain:

WITH THE ASSISTANCE
OF
THE GIRL SCOUTS

and we fastened that just underneath the other sign on our martial standard. Pee-wee kind of balked at that.

But he didn’t balk at eating pie. They had dandy pie in that house. We all sat around the dining room eating refreshments and we had a good time. Pee-wee showed them that a scout could eat, anyway. Even still, every time there was a noise he gave a start. Safety first.

Dora Dane Daring said she liked Bridgeboro.

Pee-wee said, “Were you ever in Bennett’s there?”

She said no, but she knew some girls there.

I said, “Do you know Minerva Skybrow? We named a kind of mushroom after her.”

She said, “The idea!”

I said, “It’s a good idea; she showed us all about how to grow mushrooms. She can play tennis in four languages, that girl can. There are a lot of smart people in Bridgeboro. We’ve got three patrols in our troop but, thank goodness, there’s only one of them here. That’s enough, hey?”

Westy said, “If you ever come on a hike to Bridgeboro——”

“Maybe you can’t walk that far,” Pee-wee said.

She just looked at him, very scornful.

I said, “If you ever come over there, come and see us in our headquarters; we’re away most of the time—I didn’t mean it that way.—We’ve got a railroad car for a meeting-place down by the river. Drop in if you’re ever down that way.”

“Drop in the river?” she said. “Aren’t you perfectly dreadful!”

“The river’s all right,” Pee-wee said.

One of the other girls said, “I bet you have lots of fun, you boys.”

“We eat it alive,” I told her. “There’s a scarcity of fun in Bridgeboro because we used it all up. That’s why we have to explore the country. The next thing we’re going to do is a zigzag hike.”

She said, “Did anybody ever tell you you were crazy?”

“Nobody has to tell us,” I said, “because we know it. Anyway, I guess we have to be going now.”

We had dandy fun sitting around there talking. Girls are all right, only they’re kind of funny, they keep giggling all the time—giggling and fixing their hair. But anyway, they know how to do good turns. Most of them like algebra and they’re funny in other ways too. But gee whiz, everybody has something the matter with him. I know a girl who stuck a safety pin on a stump for a scout sign. But they’re strong on being kind and all that, I’ll say that much.

Those girls took us out across the lawn in back and when I pointed out the big poplar tree away up there on west ridge they said they’d like to be going with us. And Dora Dane Daring said she was glad her father owned that house, so she could help us to keep to our bee-line. They stood there at the fence waving to us until we got away over pretty near to Westcott’s Hill. One of them threw a kiss to us then. Girls always wait till you get far away before they do that so that you can’t be really sure whether they meant it that way or not.

But I was sure, all right.

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