The Scout Mutiny
IT WAS midsummer in the garden; long, golden vacation days. The bees were happy. Innumerable swarms had stretched the rows of hives not only down the sides of the garden, but well across the foot, and Jamie was beginning to feel that by the coming season some of them must be disposed of or he would have more than he could manage. The flowers were blooming in a mad riot of colour. The trees were laden with fruit. He was so nearly a well man that he was beginning to use his left arm almost without realizing that he was using it. Carefully he was oiling the soft skin. It was still protected with a light pad. The bandages were so nearly negligible he did not even notice them or the soft strap across his shoulders that held them in place. Every day was a day of work that he loved in a location that he loved. Every evening he found refuge in the books that taught him the things that he needed to know to master his new profession, and now he was beginning to branch out to those other books, the emanations of the brightest minds of ages reaching back to the earliest collected beginnings of literature.
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