"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
promised to do his duty to God and Country and to obey the Scout Law.
The fact was that Tom was clumsy and rough--perhaps a little
uncouth--and he could do big things but not little things.
As he ambled along the dark street, nursing his disgruntled mood, he
came to Rockwood Place and turned into it, though it did not afford him
the shortest way home. But in his sullen mood one street was as good as
another, and Rockwood Place had that fascination for him which wealth
and luxury always had for poor Tom.
Three years before, when Tom Slade, hoodlum, had been deserted by his
wretched, drunken father and left a waif in Bridgeboro, Mr. Ellsworth
had taken him in hand, Roy had become his friend, and John Temple,
president of the Bridgeboro Bank, noticing his amazing reformation, had
become interested in him and in the Boy Scouts as well.
It had proven a fine thing for Tom and for the Scouts. Mr. Temple had
endowed a large scout camp in the Catskills, which had become a vacation
spot for troops from far and near, and which, during the two past
summers, had been the scene of many lively adventures for the Bridgeboro
boys.
But Tom had to thank Temple Camp and its benevolent founder for
something more than health and recreation and good times. When the troop
had returned from that delightful woodland community in the preceding
autumn and Tom had reached the dignity of long trousers, the question
of what he should do weighed somewhat heavily on Mr. Ellsworth's mind,
for Tom was through school and it was necessary that he be established
in some sort of home and in some form of work which would enable him to
pay his way.
Perhaps Tom's own realization of this had its part in inclining him to
go off to war. In any event, Mr. Ellsworth's perplexities, and to some
extent his anxieties, had come to an end when Mr. Temple had announced
that Temple Camp was to have a city office and a paid manager for the
conduct of its affairs, which had theretofore been looked after by
himself and the several trustees and, to some extent, by Jeb Rushmore,
former scout and plainsman, who made his home at the camp and was called
its manager.
Whether Jeb had fulfilled all the routine requirements may be a
question, but he was the spirit of the camp, the idol of every boy who
visited it, and it was altogether fitting that he should be relieved of
the prosy duties of record-keeping which were now to be relegated to the
little office in Mr. Temple's big bank building in Bridgeboro.
So it was arranged that Tom should work as a sort of assistant to Mr.
Burton in the Temple Camp office and, like Jeb Rushmore, if he fell
short in some ways (he couldn't _touch_ a piece of carbon paper without
getting his fingers smeared) he more than made up in others, for he knew
the camp thoroughly, he could describe the accommodations of every
cabin, and tell you every by-path for miles around, and his knowledge of
the place showed in every letter that went out over Mr. Burton's name.
From the window, high up on the ninth floor, Tom could look down behind
the big granite bank building upon a narrow, muddy place with barrel
staves for a sidewalk and tenements with conspicuous fire escapes, and
washes hanging on the disorderly roofs. This was Barrel Alley, where Tom
had lived and where his poor, weary mother had died. He could pick out
the very tenement. Strangely enough, this spot of squalor and unhappy
memories held a certain place in his affection even now.
Tom and Mr. Burton and Miss Ellison, the stenographer, were the only
occupants of the little office, but Mr. Temple usually came upstairs
from the bank each day to confer with Mr. Burton for half an hour or
so.
There was also another visitor who was in the habit of coming upstairs from
the bank and spending many half hours lolling about and chatting. This was
Roscoe Bent, a young fellow who was assistant something-or-other in the
bank and whose fashionable attire and worldly wisdom caused Tom to stand
in great awe of him.
Roscoe made no secret of the fact that he came up in order to smoke
cigarettes, which practice was forbidden down in the bank. He would come
up, smoke a cigarette, chat a while, and then go down again. He seemed
to know by inspiration when Mr. Burton and Mr. Temple were going to be
there. Up to the morning of this very day he had never shown very much
interest in either Tom or Temple Camp, though he appeared to entertain a
lively interest in Miss Ellison, and Tom envied him his easy manner and
his faculty for entertaining her and making her laugh.
On the morning of this day, however, when he had come up for his
clandestine smoke, he had manifested much curiosity about the camp,
looking over the maps and pictures and asking many questions.
Tom had felt highly flattered.