Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/261

 canoeing, your canoe makes the waves the rest of them upset in. If it comes to a slugging match, you got to have your jewjits so thoroughly in practice that you can sling any of the bunch in any direction you want ’em to circulate. Being a Scout Master means mastering the bunch; and Fat Ole Bill is getting to the place where I’m goin’ some if I handle him! The Nice Child is easier, but let me tell you, Angel Face is putting on muscle these days! He didn’t used to be so well. He was fussing around with appendicitis. Anywhere in the region of his right side even a little crack would knock him out and make him sweat blood. But now he’s kicking out of it in fine shape. He’s going to make a great big, strong man. In just about a year more he’s going to find out what I know already, that if he knew as much as I do, he’d know it’s only luck if I handle him now. And whenever they find that out they’s mutiny, and the fellow that can handle the bunch is due to usurp the throne. I got that out of a history book, and it’s good stuff. It sounds unpleasant, but it’s a plain statement of facts. Scout Master and The Limit is the same thing.”

“In other words, you are working too hard,” said Jamie. “You are trained down so fine that you are on the edge, and while the rest of them are gaining, you are losing. Is that the point?”

The Scout Master meditated.

“I guess the real needle-fine point of it is that there’s one of me and there’s three of them, and sometimes they beg so hard that we let in two or three more that I can’t