Before she realized it she was shaking hands with Scoutmaster Ned while her other arm was around Peter. "I'm going to come here and stay a month," the young man said. "I'm going to churn butter and eat pie--if I can escape from that outfit. Well good-bye, we're off. I hope the old bus runs." "It looks reel smart with all the blue paint," said Mrs. Piper. "Handsome is as handsome does," said Scoutmaster Ned. "Climb in, Pete, what are you scared of? It won't eat you. Anybody'd think you were stalking--stepping so carefully. Know what stalking is? They'll show you." Mrs. Piper stood holding her gingham apron to her eyes as they rode off. It was of exactly the same pattern as Peter's shirt. He looked funny sitting rather fearfully on the front seat. She had never dreamed of seeing him enthroned amid such sumptuousness. Perhaps some day he would go away and come back _rich_--a hero. Her Peter. And this stranger liked him. She was weeping because she had never heard her boy called Pete since his father died. She liked to hear him called Pete, it was so friendly, and recalled the past so vividly.... As if Scoutmaster Ned would have called him anything else than Pete! CHAPTER XXXVII HINTS They showed him. As Scoutmaster Ned had told him they would do, they showed him. And Peter Piper was in dreamland; it was all too good to be true. They showed him how to track and stalk. And how to signal. Nick showed him how to make a smudge fire, and Peter was doubly sure, then, that Nick would win the cup. In the nights he dreamed of the winning of that cup, of Nick winning it. Yes, they showed him. Fido Norton showed him how to track a rabbit, and a small-sized, pocket edition of a scout in the Elephant Patrol showed him (very difficult) how to trail a hop-toad. Charlie Norris showed him how to use a deadly kodak, which Peter had never seen before. He liked it because it pulled open the way a turtle's neck comes out, and then went in again. Oh yes, they all showed him. And meanwhile Peter Piper kept his secret and no one ever knew of his little exploit, for which the handbook really deserved all the credit. The adventure of the stolen car was now forgotten in a hundred new activities, and with it the rope across the road and the lantern and all that. Sometimes when they spoke of that, Peter was troubled. But they did not often speak of it. And he did not even tell them that he was a pioneer scout. Harding and Coolidge he now kept in the pocket of his stove-pipe pantaloons. For Peter Piper was approaching scouthood through the tenderfoot class. Yes, they were all busy showing him.