After I showed the picture to Skinny I shut the Handbook because I wouldn’t need it any more and I laid the two dollar bill down on the table in a hurry, because I wanted to straighten Skinny’s belt and fix his collar right and make him look as good as I could. Anyway I laid an oar-lock on the bill so it wouldn’t blow away. I’ve got two nickel-plated oar-locks that my patrol gave me on troop birthday, and I keep them in my tent except when I go to camp. Westy was telling Skinny how fine he looked and, oh, gee, Skinny was happy, you could see that. Of course, he didn’t look very good, I have to admit it, but he had a smile a mile long. “You’re all right,” I told him, “all you have to do is to stand up straight and think about scouting and the oath and the laws, and then you’ll look like one.” Then he said, “I have to have one of those axes, don’t I?” “You should worry about an axe,” I said; “you didn’t see one in the picture did you?” “Wasn’t it because the boy in the picture was facing me, and you wear the axe in back, don’t you?” “Don’t you worry,” I told him, “I know that fellow in the picture and he hasn’t got one on.” “One of your scout fellows says you have to have one,” he said, kind of timid. “Good night!” I said to Westy, “Pee-wee’s been at it.” “He knows, too,” Skinny said. “You mean that little fellow?” I said. “Has he been talking to you?” “Yes,” he said. “Forget it,” I told him; “if that kid had his picture taken he’d stand with his back to the camera so as to show his belt-axe. If he had the Gold Cross he’d pin it on the end of his nose, so everybody’d see it. The principal thing to wear is the scout smile, you take it from me. When you see Mr. Ellsworth to-night you ask him about the belt-axe and go by what he says. That’s the one to go to—your scoutmaster.” “But anyway it’s in the book about the axe,” he said, and oh, gee, I could see how he fell for that axe. I don’t know, it was something about it, I suppose. “It’s all right for a tree to fall for an axe, but don’t _you_,” I said. That was a joke. “You got to have one when you go chopping trees, haven’t you?” he asked me. “You forget it,” I said, and I decided I’d give Pee-wee a good bawling out after the meeting. Then I started straightening Skinny’s suit and telling him how swell he looked and how he must always take off his hat to ladies. He was interested all right, but I could see how the belt-axe kind of had him, and I suppose it was because it was bright and shiny and a weapon, sort of. That’s the way it is with lots of fellows when they start being scouts. We tried to get him to go in the house to supper with us and then go to the meeting, but he was kind of scared and wouldn’t. I guess it was because I live in a big house and because my father is rich—but anyway, he never acts that way, that’s one sure thing. And, gee, nobody can say Ruth and Marjorie wouldn’t have been nice to him too.