After he’d been at camp three or four days, Harry Donnelle said to me, “Skeezeks, are you game for a real hike—you and your patrol?”
I said, “Real hikes are our specialties—we eat ’em alive.”
“I don’t mean just a little stroll down to the village or even over as far as the Hudson,” he said; “but a hike that _is_ a hike. Do you think you could roll up a hundred miles?”
“As easy as rolling up my sleeves,” I told him. “We’re so game that a ball game isn’t anything compared with us. Speak out and tell us the worst.”
He said, “Well, I was thinking of a little jaunt back home.”
“_Good night_,” I told him, “I thought maybe you meant as far as Kingston or Poughkeepsie, But Bridgeboro! Oh boy!”
“Of course, we wouldn’t get very far from the Hudson,” he said, “and we could jump on a West Shore train most anywhere, if you kids got tired.”
“The only thing we’ll jump on will be _you_—if you talk like that,” I said; “Silver Foxes don’t jump on trains. But how about the other fellows—the Elks and the raving Ravens? United we stand, divided we sprawl.”
He said, “Let them rave; I’m not going to head a whole kindergarten. Eight of you are enough. Who do you think I am, General Pershing?” And then he ruffled up my beautiful curly hair and he gave me a shove—same way as he always did. “This is not a grand drive,” he said, “it’s a hike. Just a few shock troops will do.”
“We’ll shock you all right,” I said, “but first you’d better speak to Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster), and get the first shock out of the way.”
“I think I have Mr. Ellsworth eating out of my hand,” he said; “you leave that to me. I just wanted to sound you and find out if you were game or whether you’re just tin horn scouts—parlor scouts.”
“Well, do I sound all right?” I said. “Believe _me_, there are only two things that keep us from hiking around the world, and those are the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.”
“Think you could climb over the Equator?” he said, laughing all the while. And he gave me another one of those shoves—_you_ know.
Then he said, “Well then, Skeezeks, I’ll tell you what you do. You call a meeting of the Foxes and lay this matter on the table——”
“Why should I lay it on the table?” I said; “you’d think it was a plate of soup. _I’ll stand_ on the table and address them, that’s what I’ll do.”