But first I have to get you across Willow Place over to the Sneezenbunker land. The next Saturday Mr. Jenson’s locomotive gave our car another shove right across where the repair shop had stood, and it went across Willow Place fine and dandy, because we had dug the old tracks out and sort of cleared the way. Mr. Jenson said he wouldn’t push the car any further because he thought the trestle over the marsh wasn’t safe. He said he wasn’t going to take any chances. We said, “All right, every little bit counts.” So there was our home sweet home on the Sneezenbunker land, and the Sneezenbunkers didn’t care, because there weren’t any of them any more anyway. They were all dead. The Trust Company owns that land, and I said I guessed they’d trust us there because that was their business. They told my father it would be all right. But, gee whiz, we wanted to get down by the river. I said, “Foiled again, but what care we? We’ll stay here till something happens.”
The next thing that happened the Ravens and the Elks (they’ve got forty-two merit badges, the Elks), they started up to Temple Camp; that’s where we always go in the summer. My patrol decided to stay home until August, anyway, and camp in the old car and try to get it moved down to the river. Pee-wee is in the Ravens, but he’s got about as much patrol spirit as a stray cat. He belongs everywhere, especially where there are eats. No one patrol can hold that kid. He said he was going to stay with us.
[Illustration: ROY HANDED THE BOX OF MATCHES TO THE JUDGE]
I said, “You can’t do that on account of your patrol; they’ll have to vote on it.”
They voted on it all right, and every single one of them voted for him to stay. Elected by a large unanimity, hey? It wasn’t a vote; it was a census.
I said, “What do you fellows think the Silver Fox Patrol is? A Salvation Army Home? Haven’t we got enough on our hands with Alexander the Great?”
That’s all they cared about. Jiminies, my patrol is easy.
So the ones that were left in Bridgeboro were the following, only they weren’t much of a following, because every one of them goes his own way:
First comes me—I mean I—correct. I’m patrol leader. If you want to know what I look like, look on the cover of this book. Maybe you think I’m always happy like that, but, believe me, if you had to manage that bunch you’d look sad. That picture was taken just after I got through subduing a strawberry sundae. Life is not all joy, quoth he; that’s what I say.