“Even if her hair was only gold-filled it would be something,” Connie Bennett said.

“You’re crazy!”, Pee-wee shouted, “it shows none of you know anything about stories.”

Oh, jiminy, I can’t tell all the stuff we shouted.  You see, it was just because we were feeling so good.  And Mr. Ellsworth didn’t try to stop us.  The next chapter is about two dollars.  I don’t mean it’s worth that much.  I don’t know what I’ll name it yet.

Olive oil*—­that’s the French way to say, “So long.”  Anyway, it’s something like that.  I should worry.

     [Au revoir is probably what he meant.]

CHAPTER XX

MOSTLY ABOUT SKINNY

This chapter I am going to fill with some stuff about a two dollar bill.

That isn’t so bad for poetry, is it?  I got that idea out of a story by Sir Walter Scott—­putting poetry at the top of the chapters.  Mr. Ellsworth says sometimes a fellow might get killed for writing poetry.  I should worry—­a scout is brave.

You can bet that if Pee-wee had his way we’d have all gone into the city that very night and broken into a store to get Skinny’s outfit.  But nix on that hurry up business when it comes to Mr. Ellsworth.  “Scouts are not made in a day,” he said to Pee-wee, “and the outfit doesn’t make the scout anyway, remember that.”

“Any more than a merry-go-round makes a good turn,” I said.

So Mr. Ellsworth went to see Skinny and his mother, and then he went to see the doctor, and he found out that Skinny wasn’t going to die right then, but that something was the matter with his lungs, and that he’d keep getting sick all the time probably and wouldn’t grow up.  Oh, boy, when Mr. Ellsworth once gets on your trail, good night!  That’s just the way he hauled Tom Slade into the troop, head over heels.  And look at Connie Bennett, too.  Mr. Ellsworth had to hypnotize Connie’s mother and now Connie’s a first class scout.  After two or three nights he brought Skinny to meeting, and oh, cracky, but that kid looked bad.  He just sat and watched us do our stunts and he was scared when anybody spoke to him, except Mr. Ellsworth.  And he was coughing a lot, too.

After the meeting Westy and I and Mr. Ellsworth took him home, and just when we left him he asked us if maybe he’d live long enough to get the pathfinder’s badge.  And oh, gee, it made me feel good the way Mr. Ellsworth answered him.

He said, “Well, I can’t exactly promise that because I don’t know how long it will take you to win that badge, but if you think you can win it inside of forty or fifty years, I think you’ll be there to grab it when it comes.”  Oh, jingoes, but we’ve got one dandy scoutmaster.  I don’t care what you say, he’s the best one in America.  And when he said that, Skinny kind of smiled and then you could see how thin he was, because the wrinkles came all around his mouth.