om said; "I got to be
fair."

"I'm not mad, you old grouch," Roy said, "and you should say sixty
cents, because the price of everything is double. We should worry. I was
waiting here to meet you so as to tell you that I don't know why you
did that and I don't care. People have done crazier things than that, I
should hope. We can bunk in tents, all right. So don't be sore, Tomasso.
I'm sorry I said what I did and I know perfectly well that you just
didn't think. You don't suppose I really meant that I thought you knew
anybody in that troop out in Ohio, do you? I just said it because I was
mad. Gee whiz, I know you wouldn't give anybody the choice before
_us_--before your own fellows. I was mad because I was disappointed. But
now I know how maybe you were all kind of--you know--rattled on account
of being so busy.

"I ain't mad," said Tom, in his dull, stolid way; "I got to go across
the street and mail this letter."

"And you'll come to meeting next Friday night?" Roy asked, anxiously.

"I don't know," Tom said.

"And I'm going to tell the fellows that you assigned five, six, and
seven, to that Ohio troop just because you were thinking about
something else when you did it, and that you didn't know anything more
about those fellows than if they were the man in the moon," Roy paused a
moment. "Did you?" he said conclusively.

"You can tell them whatever you want to," Tom said. "You can tell them
that I didn't know anything about them if you want to. I don't care what
you tell them."

Roy paused, hardly knowing what to say. In talking with Tom one had to
get him right just as a wrestler must get his victim right and Roy knew
that he must watch his step, so to speak.

"You can tell them they won't lose anything," Tom said.

"They'll lose something all right if they lose _you_, Tomasso," Roy
said, with a note of deep feeling in his voice. "But we're not going to
lose you, I can tell you that. They think you have no use for the scouts
any more, because you met so many people in France, and know a lot of
grown-up people."

"Is that what they think?" Tom asked.

They both stepped aside for Margaret Ellison, the Temple Camp
stenographer, to pass in, and spoke pleasantly with her until she had
entered the elevator.

"I don't care what they think," Roy said; "a scout is observant. Can't I
see plain enough that you have your pioneer scout badge on? That shows
you're thinking about the scouts."

"I put it on for a r