"I'm not in your patrol," Pee-wee said.

"What's the big idea?" Westy Martin asked. "You weren't in it when you
went on the bee-line hike with us either, were you?"

"That's different," Pee-wee said. "Anyway I was a scout then, because
I was in the Ravens and anyway I've got to go to the store."

Before they realized it he was gone.

"What the dickens did you want to say that for?" Roy asked Warde.

"Oh, it just jumped out of my mouth," Warde said; "I didn't think he'd
be so touchy. Wait, I'll call him back."

But the sturdy little figure trudging down the hill paid no attention
to Warde's call. And the Silver Foxes, friendly and sympathetic as
they were, were too preoccupied to think much about this trifling
affair. Perhaps they had just a little disinclination to having
visitors, even the little mascot, participating in their private
councils just then.

The point of the whole matter was that Pee-wee had been unintentionally
eliminated; it was a sort of automatic process attributable to the
springtime. And he found himself alone. He was not out of the troop,
but he was not in any of the patrols, and in spite of all his
spectacular missionary work he had not been able to form a patrol.

Pee-wee's pride was as great as his voice and his appetite, and he
would not sponge on the patrols which had a full membership and were