Recently, all in the one day, I came across three cases of Scouts
doing their duty.
One lady told me that when travelling in a crowded train she and her
daughter were put into a carriage which was already crammed full of
boys.
She did not like it a bit at first, but she soon found the difference
between "Scouts" and "boys." These were "Scouts," and they at once
helped the ladies and their baggage into the carriage, and then made
plenty of room for them by sitting on each other's knees, and kept
order and behaved so nicely that she fell in love with all of them,
and talked with them and found them "quite charming and gentlemanly."
Another lady told me that some Scouts had asked leave to camp in her
grounds, and as she has allowed boys to do this for some years past,
she did not like to refuse them: at the same time she was not very
glad to have them, because she had found it expensive and troublesome
every year to have to get the camping-ground cleaned up and set right
after they had gone.
The day after the Scouts had finished their camp, she sent as usual
some men to work on the camp-ground, when to her astonishment, they
came back and said there was no work to be done there, the ground was
all clean, rubbish and ashes removed, and turf replaced. And then she
remembered that these were "Scouts," not ordinary boys, who had been
camping there--and she will be glad to see them there again whenever
they like to come!
The weather this morning was beautifully hot and fine, but in the
afternoon it suddenly changed to cold, windy, and steady rain. Numbers
of ladies and children had gone out for a day on the beach or in the
country. In one case a woman and her two children had to come back
part of the way in an open boat, and then in a steam-launch, in their
summer clothes, without umbrellas or waterproofs.
A Scout who was there seemed to have foreseen bad weather, as he had
two waterproof coats, and he gave up one and offered it to cover the
children.
"Well!" you would say, "that is easy enough, and he kept himself dry
and snug in the other."
No, he didn't, he put that on the woman, and went and did the best he
could for himself on the lee side of the deck; he put a smile on and
pretended that a cold trickle down the back is a good thing for the
complexion; and that is what any other Scout would have done in the
circumstances.
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