Tom Slade with the Colors | Page 3

manner
relaxed into the usual off-hand way which the scouts so liked and
which had made him so popular among them.
"President Wilson wasn't in any great rush about going to war, and I
don't want you to be in a hurry to get into a uniform. You're in a
uniform already, if it comes to that. And the Secretary of War says our
little old 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