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 pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings,
stockbrokers. 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 Car