And when the Boy Scouts do all the noble things in the noble
way they do, what will be expected of the girls, now that they are
being let Into the organization? The boys have to pledge themselves to
be clean and honorable and kind and just and charitable and brave; so,
of course, the girls will have to be all that and still more. Could I?
I sat still and thought for a long time, and Tony, with his knowledge
of girls, let me do it. Could I? Could a girl with a father that might
have done the thing that my father is suspected of having done to a
fellow-man, promise to be all or any of those things? How would she
know that some little thing in her, like her father, wouldn't come up,
just at the time when she was being depended on, to make her fail?
This distinction was not for me!
"Tony," I said quietly, and I didn't let the tremble in my heart get
into my voice at all, "whatever happens to me in my life I can't ever
forget that you offered to make me the leader of the Campfire, but--I
can't be it. Please don't make me say any more about it. I can't."
Tony understood. "Not a word more on the subject, Bubble; but I do
want to say that you are one fine--"
But just here we were interrupted by Mamie Sue coming lumbering across
the wall from the Byrd cottage, for Tony and I had been sitting on a
bench out under the blooming peach-tree arbor.
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