“Do you call that logic?” Pee-wee demanded in the tones of an earthquake.  “If one thing is better than another thing how can that other thing be better than the other thing?  You’re crazy!”

“Goodness gracious, look who’s here?” said Hunt Manners, who was sorting out some fish-hooks.  “The whole Canned Salmon Patrol.”

Pee-wee stood outside the tent, breathing hard after his long tramp up the hill to the Blakeley place.

“Don’t you know this is private land?” Warde Hollister said, rather heedless of the possible effect of his remark.

“I didn’t come in the tent, did I?” Pee-wee retorted wistfully.

“Come ahead in, Kid,” said Roy.  “Are you hungry?  Here’s some fish-hooks.”

“No, I’m not hungry,” Pee-wee said.  He had been so touched by Warde’s thoughtless remark that he held himself aloof from Roy’s hospitality.  “I only came up to tell you that the thunderstorm up the river did a lot of damage; a house was struck by lightning in North Bridgeboro and a lot of trees were blown down.”  This was not what he had come up for, though indeed the news was true, but his pride was touched by that remark of Warde’s and he would not now admit that he had tramped up there just to visit them.

“Gee whiz, do you think I don’t know that eight’s a company, nine’s a crowd with patrols?” he said.  “Do you think I don’t know that?  Anyway, if I wanted to go and hang out with any patrol I’d go with the Ravens, wouldn’t I?  I only came up to tell you that, because I thought you’d like to know.  Do you think I’m trying to find out your secrets?  Gee whiz!”

“Come ahead in, Kid,” said Roy; “Warde didn’t mean that.”

“I will not.”

“What’s the matter with you anyway?” Will Dawson asked.

“I’m not in your patrol,” Pee-wee said.

“What’s the big idea?” Westy Martin asked.  “You weren’t in it when you went on the bee-line hike with us either, were you?”

“That’s different,” Pee-wee said.  “Anyway I was a scout then, because I was in the Ravens and anyway I’ve got to go to the store.”

Before they realized it he was gone.

“What the dickens did you want to say that for?” Roy asked Warde.

“Oh, it just jumped out of my mouth,” Warde said; “I didn’t think he’d be so touchy.  Wait, I’ll call him back.”

But the sturdy little figure trudging down the hill paid no attention to Warde’s call.  And the Silver Foxes, friendly and sympathetic as they were, were too preoccupied to think much about this trifling affair.  Perhaps they had just a little disinclination to having visitors, even the little mascot, participating in their private councils just then.

The point of the whole matter was that Pee-wee had been unintentionally eliminated; it was a sort of automatic process attributable to the springtime.  And he found himself alone.  He was not out of the troop, but he was not in any of the patrols, and in spite of all his spectacular missionary work he had not been able to form a patrol.