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 “I can hold him! I can hold him edzactly like you do and keep the face cloth down. I want to hold him!”

Jamie smiled quizzically.

“And if Fat Ole Bill and the Nice Child and Angel Face come trooping down the street and see you holding a baby——”

“Now, you look here,” broke in the little Scout. “Fat Ole Bill and the Angel and the whole bunch can just fry in their own fat! All of ’em’s gettin’ too fat, anyway. Great big softies! Anybody that’s got any objections to anybody else holdin’ a little bit of a new baby that ain’t got any mother and that wants his dinner can have the best lickin’ I’ve got in my system, and they can have it quick! Step on the gas, Mom, and let’s get him home before he cries!”

The Scout Master tightened careful arms around the little bundle and called back: “I’ll telephone twice a day. I’m goin’ to stay at home and do all the care-taking myself except the feeding and changing and bathing. You call me when Margaret comes and you get your arrangements made.”

Jamie went back inside the house and sat down suddenly on the first chair he saw. He tried to think constructively, reasonably, humanely. Such an unexpected experience, such a startling experience, such a pitiful experience, he had not bargained for in his Adventure. It had come, and Jamie could not figure exactly why.

“I suppose,” he said at last, “that when God made trees and fruit and grain, He knew how He was going to