Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/279

 go a little slower and eat more properly cooked food at home and eat less hot dogs while you are scouting, just what you prophesied will happen to you. If you take such pride in being the Scout Master, you’d better remember that you can’t hold that office unless you are physically fit. You’d better cut out some of the hiking and some of the fights and a whole lot of irregular eating.”

“Sky Pilot!” scoffed the Scout Master. “You sound like I had the hoof and mouth disease.”

And thereupon Jamie was treated to a countenance of such solemnity, to folded hands and uprolled eyes—for one instant he caught an expression with which he had been familiar in his boyhood—that he could not help laughing.

“You know,” said Jamie, very soberly, “that I’ve been thinking lately that being a preacher wouldn’t be such a bad profession. You might do a whole lot worse things than try to teach other men to come clean, to shoot straight, to ride hard, to be real men spiritually as well as physically.”

The Scout Master shuffled ahead and beat Jamie to the hot-dog stand. Also, the price for two was forth-coming.

“My treat to-day! And that looks kind of rotten to let you treat the last time when there was five of us and take it myself when there are only two. It’ll be my treat the next time and a half.”

Jamie stood staring.

“You figure your finances to the penny?”