Tom Slade with the Colors | Page 3

scout khaki is going to make itself felt. I'd be the last to preach slacking, and when it's time, if the time comes, I'll tell you.... You know, Tom," he added ruefully, "you're getting to be such a fine, strapping fellow that it makes me afraid you'd get away with it if you tried. I don't like to see you so big, Tom----"
"Don't you care," said Pee-wee soothingly, "I'm small still."
"If you were old enough, I wouldn't say anything against it," Mr. Ellsworth added. "But you're not, Tom. Some people don't seem to think there's anything wrong in a boy's lying about his age to get into the army. But I do, and I think you do---- Don't you?" he added anxiously.
"Y-e-es."
"Of course, you couldn't enlist without Mr. Temple's consent, he being your guardian, unless you lied--and I know you wouldn't do that."
"You didn't catch me in many, did you?"
"I never caught you in any, Tom."
"Well, then----"
"Well, then," concluded Mr. Ellsworth, "I guess we'd all better go home and get some sleep. We've got one strenuous day to-morrow."
"It's going to be a peach," said Roy, looking up at the stars. As they started to move away, Mr. Ellsworth instinctively extended his hand to Tom again.
"I have your promise, then?" said he.
"Y-e-s."
"I'm not stuck on that 'yes.'"
"Yes," said Tom, more briskly.
"That you won't do anything along that line till you consult me?"
"Don't do anything till you count ten," said Roy.
"Make it ten thousand," said Mr. Ellsworth.
"And after you've counted ten," put in Pee-wee, "if you decide to go, I'll go with you, by crinkums!"
"Go-o-d-night!" laughed Roy. "That ought to be enough to keep you at home, Tomasso!"
Tom smiled, half grudgingly, as he turned and started toward home.
"You don't think he'd really enlist, do you?" queried Roy, as he and Pee-wee and Mr. Ellsworth sauntered up the street.
"He won't now," said the scoutmaster. "I have his promise."
"Otherwise, do you think he would?"
"I think it extremely likely."
"And lie about his age?"
Mr. Ellsworth screwed his face into a funny, puzzled look. "There's a good deal of that kind of thing going on," he said, "and I sometimes think the recruiting people wink at it, or perhaps they are just a little too ready to judge by physical appearance. Look how Billy Wade got through."
"He doesn't look eighteen," said Roy.
"Of course he doesn't. But he told them he was 'going on nineteen,' and so he was--just the same as Pee-wee is going on fifty."
Roy laughed.
"The honor of enlisting, the willingness to sacrifice one's life, seems to cover a multitude of sins in the eyes of some people," said the scoutmaster. "Heroic duty done for one's country will wipe out a lot of faults.--It's hard to get a line on Tom's thoughts. He asked me the other day what I thought about the saying, To do a great right, do a little wrong. I don't know where he rooted it out, but it gave me a shudder when he asked me."
"He was standing in front of the recruiting station down at the postoffice yesterday," said Roy, "staring at the posters. Goodness only knows what he was thinking about. He came along with me when he saw me."
"Hmmm," said Mr. Ellsworth thoughtfully.
"But I guess he wouldn't try anything like that here--the town is too small," said Roy. "Even the recruiting fellow knows him."
"Yes; but what worries me," said Mr. Ellsworth, "is when he goes to the city and stands around listening to the orators and watches the young fellows surging into the recruiting places. That phrase, Your country needs you, is dinging in his ears."
"He'd get through in a walk," said Roy.
"That's just the trouble," Mr. Ellsworth mused. "Tom would never do anything that he thought wrong," he added, after a pause; "but he has a way of doping things out for himself, and sometimes he asks queer questions."
"Well, he promised you, anyway," said Roy finally.
"Oh, yes, that settles it," Mr. Ellsworth said. "All's well that ends well."
"We should worry," said Roy, in his usual light-hearted manner.
"That's just what I shan't do," the scoutmaster answered.
"All right, so long, see you later," Roy called, as he started up Blakeley's hill.
Mr. Ellsworth and Pee-wee waved him goodnight. Presently Pee-wee deserted and went down, scout pace, through Main Street, laboriously hoisting his belt axe up with every other step. It was very heavy and a great nuisance to his favorite gait, but he had worn it regularly to scout meeting ever since war had been declared.
CHAPTER II
"BULL HEAD" AND "BUTTER FINGERS"
The lateness of the hour did not incline Tom to hurry on his journey homeward. He was thoroughly discouraged and dissatisfied with himself, and it pleased his mood to amble along kicking a stone in front of him until he lost it in the darkness. Without this vent to his