"What did you do?" Tom asked, after his customary fashion of construing
talk literally.

"Oh, I didn't exactly commit a murder," the other laughed, "but I fell
down, Sla--you don't mind my calling you Slady, do you?"

"That's what most everybody calls me," Tom said, "except the troop I was
in. They call me Tomasso."

"Sounds like tomato, hey?" Hervey laughed. "No, my troubles are about
merit badges. I've bungled the whole thing up. When a fellow goes after
the Eagle award, he ought to have a manager, that's what I say. He ought
to have a manager to plan things out for him. I tried to manage my own
campaign and now I'm stuck--with a capital S."

"How many merits have you got?" Tom asked him.

"Twenty," Hervey said, "twenty and two-thirds. Just a fraction more and
I'd have gone over the top."

"You mean a sub-division?" Tom asked.

"That's where the little _but_ comes in," Hervey said. "B-u-t, but. It's
a big word, all right, just as you said."

"Is it architecture or cooking or interpreting or one of those?" Tom
asked.

Hervey glanced at Tom in frank surprise.