sleeves," I told him. "We're so game that a ball
game isn't anything compared with us. Speak out and tell us the worst."

He said, "Well, I was thinking of a little jaunt back home."

_"Good night,"_ I told him, "I thought maybe you meant as far as Kingston
or Poughkeepsie. But Bridgeboro! Oh boy!"

"Of course, we wouldn't get very far from the Hudson," he said, "and we
could jump on a West Shore train most anywhere, if you kids got tired."

"The only thing we'll jump on will be _you_-if you talk like that," I said;
"Silver Foxes don't jump on trains. But how about the other fellows-the
Elks and the raving Ravens? United we stand, divided we sprawl."

He said, "Let them rave; I'm not going to head a whole kindergarten. Eight
of you are enough. Who do you think I am, General Pershing?" And then he
ruffled up my beautiful curly hair and he gave me a shove-same way as he
always did. "This is not a grand drive," he said, "it's a hike. Just a few
shock troops will do."

"We'll shock you all right," I said, "but first you'd better speak to Mr.
Ellsworth (he's our scoutmaster), and get the first shock out of the way."

"I think I have Mr. Ellsworth eating out of my hand," he said; "you leave
that to me. I just wanted to sound you and find out if you were game or
whether you're just tin horn scouts-parlor scouts."

"Well, do I sound all right?" I said. "Believe _me_, there are only two
things that keep us from hiking around the world, and those are the
Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean."

"Think you could climb over the Equator?" he said, laughing all the while.
And he gave me another one of those shoves--_you_ know.

Then he said, "Well then, Skeezeks, I'll tell you what you do. You call a
meeting of the Foxes and lay this matter on the table-"

"Why should I lay it on the table?" I said; "you'd think it was a plate of
soup. _I'll stand_ on the table and address them, that's what I'll do."

He said, "All right, you just picture the hardships to them. Tell them that
for whole hours at a time, we may have to go without ice cream sodas. Tell
them that we'll have to penetrate a wilderness where there is no peanut
brittle. Tell them that we'll have to enter a jungle where gum drops are
unknown. Tell them that we may have to live on grasshoppers. Tell them
about the vast morass near Kingston, where you can't even get a piece of
chocolate cake; miles and miles of barren waste where the foot of white man
has never trod u