But now I began to think maybe it would cause some trouble and I hoped he wouldn’t be giving Skinny any of that kind of talk.  But he did just the same, and it made a lot of trouble.  Pee-wee’s all right, but I don’t care if he knows what I said, because it’s true.

On Monday we had it fixed for Skinny to come up to Camp Solitaire, and Westy and I would teach him some stuff out of the Handbook.  Then we were going to give him the new stuff so he could put it on, because we wanted him to feel good—­you know what I mean—­when he went to meeting.  We didn’t want him to feel different from the other fellows.  But usually we don’t do that until a fellow takes the oath first.

Oh, boy, but wasn’t he proud when we put the khaki suit on him, and fixed the hat on his head.  He smiled in that funny way he had that always made me feel kind of bad, because it made his face look all thin.  And he was awful bashful and scared, but anyway, he was proud, I could see that.

So then I opened the Handbook to page 59, where there’s a picture of a scout standing straight, making the full salute, and I told him he should stand straight and try to look just like that.  He said, “I ain’t fat enough,” but I told him not to mind, but just to look at that picture and he’d know how he looked as a boy scout.

“How soon will I be one?” he said.  And I told him pretty soon.

Now I thought about that picture early in the morning and I made up my mind I would show it to him when he got dressed up.  You can bet he didn’t look very much like it but a lot I cared about that, as long as it made him feel good.  So early in the morning before he came, I took my two dollar bill (that’s my allowance my father always gives me Monday morning) and put it in the Handbook at page 59, so that I could find the place all right.

After I showed the picture to Skinny I shut the Handbook because I wouldn’t need it any more and I laid the two dollar bill down on the table in a hurry, because I wanted to straighten Skinny’s belt and fix his collar right and make him look as good as I could.  Anyway I laid an oar-lock on the bill so it wouldn’t blow away.  I’ve got two nickel-plated oar-locks that my patrol gave me on troop birthday, and I keep them in my tent except when I go to camp.

Westy was telling Skinny how fine he looked and, oh, gee, Skinny was happy, you could see that.  Of course, he didn’t look very good, I have to admit it, but he had a smile a mile long.

“You’re all right,” I told him, “all you have to do is to stand up straight and think about scouting and the oath and the laws, and then you’ll look like one.”

Then he said, “I have to have one of those axes, don’t I?”

“You should worry about an axe,” I said!  “You didn’t see one in the picture did you?”

“Wasn’t it because the boy in the picture was facing me, and you wear the axe in back, don’t you?”