i would like you to see the letter that wilfred sent home.
dear mother and sis:—
to-day i’m using my fountain pen instead of my opera-glass. i’m giving the birds of the air an afternoon off. my pen doesn’t write very good—i guess it’s the opal. but i won’t take it off just for spite. i’m supposed to wear it so i will no matter what happens. i’m afraid i’m not going to drop dead. i feel fine. i can’t find my heart when i put my hand there but i guess it’s there all right. don’t worry, i’m keeping my promise, safety first that’s what you say. tom slade’s all the time asking about you, sis. he said i didn’t get my disposition from you.
what do you think? al berry is here with his patrol. i wish he’d keep still about me. he sneaked up and took a banner from the ravens and i didn’t run after him so i got put out. i didn’t exactly get put out but they sort of said, here’s your hat. there’s a lame boy here and he makes me feel i don’t want to let anybody know i have anything the matter with me ’cause they’ll think i’m like him. anyway there’s nothing the matter with me but don’t worry i’m keeping my promise no matter what, the same as i’m wearing my pin no matter what. i got that five dollars you sent me, sis, and i’m saving it up for a scout suit.
i’m in the elks now, and i have to swim in the contest. don’t worry it’s not till august tenth. i’m going to see the doctor here on the first like doctor brent said. if he says my heart is still bad i’ll blame it to the opal—only he won’t say it. anyway don’t worry. if i say i’ll do a thing i’ll do it. i like these fellows. mom and sis you have to come up for the tenth. i’m glad i’ll be in the water so i won’t see the people looking at me. i can do things as long as i can forget that people are looking at me like when i was looking at madden i didn’t see the others. anyway they won’t be looking at me, they’ll be looking at you, sis. tom slade says i’ve got the same way of looking that you have. i told him a scout is observant—that’s in the book. i send you a four leaf clover, sis. i’m all the time looking on the ground and taking it easy, notice how i underline taking it easy, mom.
wilfred.
p. s. the four leaf clover and the opal don’t speak to each other.
wilfred liked the elks so much that he did not ask any of them to walk down to terryville with him where he intended to mail his letter. he wanted to walk there alone and think about his little triumph among them. they had fallen for him, as the saying is, and the realization of this was a balm to his spirit. one could not say the ravens had not been good enough scouts to seek him out and find his winsome nature; they had been too scoutlike (as one might say) for that. that is, they were too busy with scouting. now he was a decidedly large fish in a small pond. he was the “big thing” in the struggling elk patrol.
he wanted to feast upon his success with them, to let his imagination bask in the sunshine of this new favor that was his, after the ordeal of ridicule and disgrace. he felt so much at home with them! he was at his best with them. well, there is a place for every fellow, if he can only find it. wilfred wanted to indulge these solacing thoughts and that is why he walked down to terryville alone.
but there was another reason. terryville was a perilous place where scouts bought ice cream sodas and cones and candy. they treated each other to these. the elks, however humble their standing in scout lore and prowess, were not remiss in these convivial obligations. charlie o’conner was notably prodigal on his pilgrimages to the rural center of iniquity. wilfred had no money at all except his five dollar bill and this he wanted to save for a scout outfit. he would not let the others treat him. they liked him so much that he was afraid if he asked one they all might go. then, he would have to let one after another treat him. so he went alone.
at terryville something occurred which was destined to have a bearing on his future. along the village thoroughfare he paused to look in a window where, among other varieties of apparel, scout raiment and paraphernalia were displayed.
he was gazing wistfully at these things when the sudden noise of a quickly braked automobile caused him to turn about, and he beheld an all too common sight. an old man, having just escaped being run down, had returned to the curb where he stood gazing intently at the procession of cars in the forlorn hope that he might discover a gap where a second attempt might be made. one after another the heedless motorists sped past in complacent disdain of this little village which chanced to be upon the state highway. if the village itself had wanted to cross the road it would probably have fared no better than the bewildered old man. again and again he stepped from the curb and back again. yet this old man had fought his way across harder places than this in his time.
approaching the baffled pedestrian, wilfred took him gently by the arm, raised his right hand warningly, then started across the street with his tottering charge, without apparently so much as a glance at the hurrying traffic. there was another squeak of quickly applied brakes and the shiny bumper of a car all but touched wilfred’s leg. but the car stood, and likewise the car behind it stood, and a man in a dilapidated ford behind that who tried (as ford drivers will) to make a flank move stopped also, and caused a jam in approaching traffic. but the grand army passed triumphantly across!
