“To be enough of a scout to win the Eagle award is much.  To be scout enough to ignore it is more.  But twenty-one badges is twenty-one badges, and the animal first aid badge is as good as any other.  The technical question of whether a bird is an animal——­”

“Sure a bird’s an animal!” called a voice from a far corner which sounded suspiciously like the voice of Pee-wee Harris.  “Everybody’s an animal—­even I’m an animal—­even you’re an animal—­sure a bird’s an animal!  That’s not a teckinality!  Sure a bird’s an animal!”

“Well, then, that settles it,” laughed Mr. Temple amid a very tempest of laughter, “if that is Mr. Harris of my own home town speaking, we have the opinion of the highest legal expert on scouting——­”

“And eating!” came a voice.

Thus, amid an uproarious medley of laughter and applause, and of cheering which echoed from the darkening hills across the quiet lake, Hervey Willetts stood erect while Mr. John Temple, founder of the camp and famous in scouting circles the world over, placed upon his jacket the badge which made him an Eagle Scout and incidentally brought him the canoe on which so many eyes had gazed longingly.

And then one after another, pell-mell, scouts clambered onto the platform and surrounded him, while the scouts of his own troop edged them aside and elbowed their way to where he stood and mobbed him.  And amid all this a small form, with clothing disarranged from close contact, but intent upon his purpose, squirmed and wriggled in and threw his little skinny arms around the hero’s waist.

“Will you—­will you take me out in it?” he asked.  “Just once—­will you?”

“The canoe?” Hervey said.  “You’ll have to ask my troop, Alf, old top; it belongs to them.  What would a happy-go-lucky nut like I am be doing, paddling around in a swell canoe like that?”

“Let me—­let me see the badge,” little Skinny insisted.

But already Hervey had handed the badge over to his troop.  Probably he thought that it would interfere with his climbing trees or perhaps fall off when he was hanging upside down from some treacherous limb or scrambling head foremost down some dizzy cliff.  No doubt it would be more or less in the way during his stuntful career....

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RED STREAK

There was one resident at Temple Camp who did not attend that memorable meeting by reason of being sound asleep at the time.  This was Orestes, the oriole, who had had such a narrow squeak of it up at the foot of the mountain.  Orestes always went to bed early and got up early, being in all ways a model scout.

It is true that just at the moment when the cheering became tumultuous, Orestes shook out her feathers and peered out of the little door of her hanging nest but, seeing no near-by peril, settled down again to sweet slumber, never dreaming that the cheering was in honor of her scout rescuer.