"Well, what of it?" inquired the taller chap composedly, as Ranny paused for breath. "What's his hair or his clothes got to do with his being a good scout?"
"Everything!" snapped Ranny, biting his lips and striving to keep down his temper. "A fellow that amounts to anything will--will keep himself decent looking even if he is--poor. Besides he--you saw him last night; couldn't do the simplest thing without making a show of himself. Take my word for it, he'll never amount to anything. He's a dead loss, and I wish-- I can't think what you see in--"
He broke off with grating teeth, maddeningly conscious of the futility and ineffectiveness of his words. It wasn't at all the sort of thing he had meant to say. He realized that temper had deadened judgment, and that the whole must sound excessively silly and childish. He fully expected his companion to greet the outbreak with open ridicule, but when he looked up, he discovered with mingled annoyance and relief that Ward wasn't listening at all. Instead, he was staring at the group ahead with an expression of such frank curiosity and interest that instinctively Ranny followed the direction of his schoolmate's eager glance.
Eight or ten boys, mostly upper-grade grammar-school students and about half of them scouts, were bunched together at the corner of a cross-street. Apparently they had been halted by a man of middle age who was talking with considerable animation, the while keeping one hand on the shoulder of Dale Tompkins, who looked exceedingly sheepish and uncomfortable. As Ranny stared, puzzled, he was amazed to see Court Parker leap suddenly at his classmate with a piercing yell, clutch him about the waist, and execute a few steps of a wildly eccentric war-dance. Then he thumped the tenderfoot violently on the back, and finally the whole crowd flung themselves on the boy in a body. As Ward and Phelps hastily approached, the victim was engulfed by numbers, but his vehement, embarrassed protests sounded intermittently above the din.
"Aw, quit it, fellows! Lay off, won't you? It wasn't anything. I-- Cut it out--do!"
"Here's the missing hero!" called Court Parker, shrilly. "Where's the leather medal?" Suddenly he slid out of the throng and faced the new-comers, his eyes shining. "What do you know about Tommy?" he demanded. "_He's_ the mysterious guy who rescued Georgie Warren last night. Fact! Mr. Pegram was there and saw him. He was the one who 'phoned the company to shut off the current, you know. Says Tommy was cool as a cucumber and had all kinds of nerve And this morning he never let out a peep about it, even when I asked him. Some kid, eh, Sherm?"