that you’re about as husky as they make ’em. You could drive a steam plough or run a stone crusher or swat a bandit, if you wanted to. I won’t do it again.”
Then the Scout Master planted a small pair of feet squarely in front of Jamie and looked at him with the very Devil dancing in the depths of the deep eyes.
“Got your goat, didn’t I?” taunted the little Scout. “Thought you’d have to go to the telephone and ring up Mother to come with the ambulance. By gracious! there goes your telephone!”
Jamie had gotten past the place where the ringing of the telephone was an event, it rang so frequently in those days. It might be Carey calling for help. It might be Grayson to explain some new legal technicality that he had encountered. It might be the bank calling. It might be the Scout Master’s mother wanting her offspring at home. Jamie wiped his hands on his trousers and walked to the telephone and picked down the receiver. The Scout Master sat on the stone that had failed to serve the purpose of breaking any bones, and with loving pride inspected the west half of the garden in which they were working and which constituted a beloved personal possession.
Looking over the length and the width of the acre that stretched down to the sea, said the little Scout: “When I get through High School, I’m comin’ here to live. They may take their darn colleges and gamble ’em and smoke ’em and drink ’em and Bolshevik ’em straight to the Devil! I’m goin’ to get my education out of the books
