Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/257

 Then the child looked up and remarked: “Now I guess we better release the clutch. If any of the fellows would see us, there’s just a possibility that I’d get toppled off my throne. My Scouts are about all I can handle some of these days, anyway.”

When they reached the street car and took their places, Jamie looked down at the figure beside him and decided that it was too lean, that the physical condition was not what it should be.

“Do you mind,” he asked, “telling me how old you are?”

“No,” said the Scout Master, “I don’t. I’m ten years old, and lemme tell you, I’ve lived ’em! I’ve lived ’em all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and I’ve lived in cities where you had to be for ever dodging the police, and the bandits, and the kidnappers, in Mother’s imagination. You couldn’t get a kidnapper to touch me with a lightnin’ rod. They’d take me for a regular roughneck!”

Jamie decided that the best way to get information was to keep quiet, so he said nothing.

“I’ve ridden on ships and boats and launches and paddled canoes and travelled on trains from the New York Limited to the Missionary, and believe me, I’ve had my eyes open and my ears open all the way! Last time we came out we missed the Limited we had reservations on and we had to take the Missionary or stay five days in Chicago and none of us could stick that, we took the Missionary. The rest of ’em like to died, but I had heaps of fun, and lemme tell you, I swelled my roll something