Tom looked somewhat impressed, though he shook his head sadly as he went on to say in reply:
“Well, I had almost made up my mind, Hugh, that I didn’t care to go out to-night. Fact is, to tell you the truth, I’m so miserable these days that I don’t seem to care whether school keeps or not—lost my appetite, and even think of resigning from the scouts.”
Hugh slapped him on the back in his cheery fashion.
“Don’t let me hear you make that threat again, Tom,” he said, in pretended severity. “We need you too much every day to let you go. Besides, your influence is going to count for a heap after the town is cleared up. You don’t know how much it means to have a scout in good standing in a family. But what ails you, Tom? Has anything new happened to give you the blues again?”
“Yes,” came the reply, accompanied with a deep sigh from the heart.
“Tell me what it is all about, Tom, won’t you?” asked Hugh, as he followed the other upstairs to his own room. Somehow, Tom seemed to feel that they ought to be alone so his mother might not overhear what passed between them.
“I’ll just close the door, Hugh, before I say anything,” remarked Tom, “though for that matter there’s no danger Benjy will interrupt us, because he’s gone off for the evening. This time I’m glad to tell you it’s to a sociable they’re having over at our church for the young people.”
His manner when saying this showed that Tom would be a happy fellow, indeed, if he could only know that every night Benjy was away from home, he was enjoying himself in similar innocent amusements as on this particular occasion.
“It’s this way, you see, Hugh,” he continued, after finding a seat close to his visitor, “for a little while now Benjy’s been acting mighty decent, and I’ve come to let myself take on more hope than I had the last time you and I talked it over. He seems more like his old self, and was even asking some questions about the scouts, though up to now he’s never seemed to care a thing about our organization, you remember. But it was too good to last, Hugh.”
Remembering what he had seen that afternoon, with Benjy counting silver coins he had received from the bird fancier, Hugh himself was obliged to mentally confess that it looked very much that way.