tle way, I
could hear the fellows talking and sawing and hammering, and I knew they
were all busy working.

When I got there they were all over the houseboat like flies, painting
and varnishing and fixing up the flagpole, and I could hear Pee-wee as
usual, shouting away. Jiminy, but it sounded good.

Then I could hear somebody say, "Well, well better late than never," and
I saw it was our scoutmaster, Mr. Ellsworth. He took a day off to help
the fellows.

"I'm only six minutes late," I said; "Silver Foxes always show up."

"Well, let us hope so," Mr. Ellsworth said

And I kind of saw that something was wrong. "Westy isn't here," somebody
shouted.

"He'll be here in a minute," I said; "get to work; you should worry about
Westy."

But just the same I felt sort of uncomfortable because one thing Mr.
Ellsworth is a stickler about is us being on time. Whenever a scout comes
late for campfire up at Temple Camp or at a troop meeting either, he
always gets a look from T. E. At camp we have breakfast at 7:42 and
lunch at 1:23 and supper at 7:13, just to teach the fellows to go by
minutes.

Anyway, I started working with my patrol, who were painting the deck. I
stuck right to it, but all the time I was wishing that Westy would show
up. Every time I heard a sound I looked up. Because maybe you don't know
that a patrol leader is responsible for his patrol and if one of them
falls down, it's just the same as if he fell down. First the fellows
kidded us about it, especially me, and spoke about the Tardy Foxes, and
the Sleepy Foxes, but pretty soon Mr. Ellsworth came to me and said he
guessed I'd better go into the club house and telephone to Westy and
find out what was the matter.

"Find out if he's awake yet," somebody said.

"Maybe we'd better send a taxi for him," another fellow shouted.

"You think you're very funny, don't you?" I said, "Maybe you raving
Ravens won't rave so much when you find out he's sick in bed." So I went
in and telephoned, and oh, jiminy, that was the first time in my life
that I ever really wished a fellow was sick. But his mother told me he
hadn't been home since about half-past seven and that when he went out
he had a catching-mitt and a baseball with him.

Jiminies, I don't often get scared, but I could feel my heart up in my
mouth, kind of, and I didn't know what to tell the fellows and Mr.
Ellsworth. It was like a disgrace to my patrol and it disgraced me, too,
you can bet. He would go