Tom Slade with the Colors | Page 4

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 distemper
he became still more sullen. It would have been better if he had hunted
up the stone and gone on kicking it. But now he was angry at the stone
too. He was angry at everybody and everything.
Ever since war had been declared Tom had worked with the troop,
doing his bit under Mr. Ellsworth's supervision, and everything he had
done he had done wrong--in his own estimation.

The Red Cross bandages which he had rolled had had to be rolled over
again. The seeds which he had planted had not come up, because he
had buried them instead of planting them. Roy's onion plants were
peeping coyly forth in the troop's patriotic garden; Doc Carson's lettuce
was showing the proper spirit; a little regiment of humble radishes was
mobilizing under the loving care of Connie Bennett, and Pee-wee's
tomatoes were bold with flaunting blossoms. A bashful cucumber
which basked unobtrusively in the wetness of the ice-box outlet under
the shed at Artie Van Arlen's home was growing apace. But not a sign
was there of Tom's beans or peas or beets--nothing in his little allotted
patch but a lonely plantain which he had carefully nursed until Pee-wee
had told him the bitter truth--that this child of his heart was nothing but
a vulgar weed.
It is true that Roy Blakeley had tried to comfort Tom by telling him that
if his seeds did not come up in Bridgeboro they might come up in
China, for they were as near to one place as the other! Tom had not
been comforted.
His most notable failure, however, had come this very week when three
hundred formidable hickory sticks had been received by the Home
Defense League and turned over to the Scouts to have holes bored
through them for the leather thongs.
There had been a special scout meeting for this work; every scout had
come equipped with a gimlet, and there was such a boring seance as
had never been known before. Roy had said it was a great bore. As fast
as the holes were bored, Pee-wee had tied the strips of leather through
them, and the whole job had been finished in the one evening.
Tom had broken his gimlet and three extra ones which fortunately
some one had brought. The hickory had proven as stubborn as he was
himself--which is saying a great deal.
He had tried boring from each side so that the holes would meet in the
middle; but the holes never met. When he had bored all the way
through from one side, he had either broken the gimlet or the hole had
come slantingways and the gimlet had come out, like a woodchuck in

his burrow, where it had least been expected to appear.
And now, to cap the climax, he was to stand outside one of the
registration places the next day and pin little flags on the young men as
they came out after registering. The other members of the troop were to
be distributed all through the county for this purpose (wherever there
was no local scout troop), and each scout, or group of scouts, would
sally heroically forth in the morning armed with a shoebox full of these
honorable mementoes, made by the girls of Bridgeboro.
And meanwhile, thought Tom, the Germans were sinking our ships and
dropping bombs on hospitals and hitting below the belt, generally. He
was not at all satisfied with himself, or with his trifling, ineffective part
in the great war. He felt that he had made a bungle of everything so far,
and his mind turned contemptuously from these inglorious duties in
which he had been engaged to the more heroic rôle of the real soldier.
Perhaps his long trousers had had something to do with his
dissatisfaction; in any event, they made his bungling seem the more
ridiculous. His fellow scouts had called him "bull head" and "butter
fingers," but only in good humor and because they loved to jolly him;
for in plain fact they all knew and admitted that Tom Slade, former
hoodlum, was the best all-round scout that ever raised his hand and