Читать книгу Tom Slade at Temple Camp - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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The letter from Mary Temple fell on Camp Solitaire like a thunderbolt. Camp Solitaire was the name which Roy had given his own cosy little tent on the Blakeley lawn, and here he and Tom were packing duffel bags and sharpening belt axes ready for their long tramp when the note from Grantley Square was scaled to them by the postman as he made a short cut across the lawn.

“What do you know about that?” said Roy, clearly annoyed. “We can’t take him; he’s too small. Who’s going to take the responsibility? This is a team hike.”

“You don’t suppose he put the idea in her head, do you?” Tom asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. You saw yourself how crazy he was about it.”

“Pee-wee’s all right,” said Tom.

“Sure he’s all right. He’s the best little camp mascot that ever happened. But how are we going to take him along on this hike? And what’s he going to do when he gets there?”

“He could help us on the troop cabin—getting it ready,” Tom suggested.

Roy threw the letter aside in disgust. “That’s a girl all over,” he said, as he sulkily packed his duffel bag. “She doesn’t think of what it means—she just wants it done, that’s all, so she sends her what-d’you-call-it—edict. Pee-wee can’t stand for a hundred and forty mile hike. We’d have to get a baby carriage!”

He went on with his packing, thrusting things into the depths of his duffel bag half-heartedly and with but a fraction of his usual skill. “You know as well as I do about team hikes. How can we fix this up for three now? We’ve got everything ready and made all our plans; now it seems we’ve got to cart this kid along or be in Dutch up at Temple’s. He can’t hike twenty miles a day. He’s just got a bee in his dome that he’d like——”

“It would be a good turn,” interrupted Tom. “I was counting on a team hike myself. I wanted to be off on a trip alone with you a while. I’m disappointed too, but it would be a good turn—it would be a peach of a one, so far as that’s concerned.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” contradicted Roy. “It would be a piece of blamed foolishness.”

“He’d furnish some fun—he always does.”

“He’d furnish a lot of trouble and responsibility! Why can’t he wait and come up with the rest? Makes me sick!” Roy added, as he hurled the aluminum coffee-pot out of a chair and sat down disgustedly.

“Now, you see, you dented that,” said Tom.

“A lot I care. Gee, I’d like to call the whole thing off—that’s what I’d like to do. I’d do it for two cents.”

“Well, I’ve got two cents,” said Tom, “but I’m not going to offer it. I say, let’s make the best of it. I’ve seen you holding your sides laughing at Pee-wee. You said yourself he was a five-reel photoplay all by himself.”

Roy drew a long breath and said nothing. He was plainly in his very worst humor. He did not want Pee-wee to go. He, too, wanted to be alone with Tom. There were plenty of good turns to be done without bothering with this particular one. Besides, it was not a good turn, he told himself. It would expose Walter Harris to perils—— Oh, Roy was very generous and considerate of Walter Harris——

“If it’s a question of good turns,” he said, “it would be a better turn to leave him home, where he’ll be safe and happy. It’s no good turn to him, dragging him up and down mountains till he’s so dog-tired he falls all over himself—is it?”

Tom smiled a little, but said nothing.

“Oh, well, if that’s the way you feel,” said Roy, pulling the cord of his duffel bag so tight that it snapped, “you and Pee-wee had better go and I’ll back out.”

“It ain’t the way I feel,” said Tom, in his slow way. “I’d rather go alone with you. Didn’t I say so? I guess Pee-wee thinks he’s stronger than he is. I think he’d better be at home too and I’d rather he’d stay home, though it’s mostly just because I want to be alone with you. Maybe it’s selfish, but if it is I can’t help it. I think sometimes a feller might do something selfish and make up for it some other way—maybe. But I don’t think any feller’s got a right to do something selfish and then call it a good turn. I don’t believe a long hike would hurt Pee-wee. He’s the best scout-pacer in your patrol. But I want to go alone with you and I’d just as soon tell Mary so. I suppose it would be selfish, but we’d just try to make up——”

“Oh, shut up, will you!” snapped Roy. “You get on my nerves, dragging along with your theories and things. I don’t care who goes or if anybody goes. And you can go home and sleep for all I care.”

“All right,” said Tom, rising. “I’d rather do that than stay here and fight. I don’t see any use talking about whether it’s a good turn to Pee-wee.” (Roy ostentatiously busied himself with his packing and pretended not to hear.) “I wasn’t thinking about Pee-wee so much anyway. It’s Mary Temple that I was thinking of. It would be a good turn to her, you can’t deny that. Pee-wee Harris has got nothing to do with it—it’s between you and me and Mary Temple.”

“You going home?” Roy asked, coldly.

“Yes.”

“Well, you and Pee-wee and Mary Temple can fix it up. I’m out of it.”

He took a pad and began to write, while Tom lingered in the doorway of the tent, stolid, as he always was.

“Wait and mail this for me, will you,” said Roy. He wrote:

“Dear Mary—Since you butted in Tom and I have decided that it would be best for Pee-wee to go with him and I’ll stay here. Anyway, that’s what I’ve decided. So you’ll get your wish, all right, and I should worry.

Roy.”

Tom took the sealed envelope, but paused irresolutely in the doorway. It was the first time that he and Roy had ever quarrelled.

“What did you say to her?” he asked.

“Never mind what I said,” Roy snapped. “You’ll get your wish.”

“I’d rather go alone with you,” said Tom, simply. “I told you that already. I’d rather see Pee-wee stay home. I care more for you,” he said, hesitating a little, “than for anyone else. But I vote to take Pee-wee because Mary wants—asks—us to. I wouldn’t call it a good turn leaving him home, and you wouldn’t either—only you’re disappointed, same as I am. I wouldn’t even call it much of a good turn taking him. We can never pay back Mary Temple. It would be like giving her a cent when we owed her a thousand. I got to do what I think is right—you—you made me a scout. I—I got to be thankful to you if I can see straight. It’s—it’s kind of—like a—like a trail—like,” he blundered on. “There can be trails in your mind, kind of. Once I chucked stones at Pee-wee and swiped Mary’s ball. Now I want to take him along—a little bit for his sake, but mostly for hers. And I want to go alone with you for my own sake, because—because,” he hesitated, “because I want to be alone with you. But I got to hit the right trail—you taught me that——”

“Well, go ahead and hit it,” said Roy, “it’s right outside the door.”

Tom looked at him steadily for a few seconds as if he did not understand. You might have seen something out of the ordinary then in that stolid face. After a moment he turned and went down the hill and around the corner of the big bank building, passed Ching Woo’s laundry, into which he had once thrown dirty barrel staves, picked his way through the mud of Barrel Alley and entered the door of the tenement where Mrs. O’Connor lived. He had not slept there for three nights. The sound of cats wailing and trucks rattling and babies crying was not much like the soughing of the wind in the elms up on the Blakeley lawn. But if you have hit the right trail and have a good conscience you can sleep, and Tom slept fairly well amid the din and uproar.