“I don’t know anything we can do,” Dorry Benton said to me as we were going out. “We’ll think of a way,” I said; “don’t worry.” Now that’s all there was to our call on Mr. Slausen, and it wasn’t much, and nobody said anything important enough to remember, but what we said made a lot of trouble for us just the same. You’ll see. “All we’d have to do would be to move his vulcanizing table,” Westy said, “and we could run the car right through.” “Well, we should worry,” I said. “We’ll move Tony’s Lunch Wagon, vulcanizing table and all, and then we can think about the next step.” “What do you mean, vulcanizing table?” Pee-wee shouted. “The counter where he puts the inner tubes in doughnuts,” I told him. So then, as long as it was Saturday and we couldn’t do any more that day, we decided to go up to my house and send invitations to all the troops in the different towns near Bridgeboro. Pee-wee wanted to go around like Paul Revere and notify them all, but I said no, because I knew he’d only end up in some candy store miles and miles from home. This was the invitation we sent. It’s kind of crazy, but what did we care, because in my patrol we’re all crazy anyway. We ought to be called the Squirrels instead of the Silver Foxes, because we’re all nutty. Scouts, Attention! Shoulder your trusty appetites and march to Bridgeboro on Saturday next, April 17th, to reënforce your brother scouts of the 1st Bridgeboro troop in a daring enterprise. Come hungry! Don’t eat on the way! Rally in Downing’s lot near Bridgeboro Station at 10 A. M. Ask not the reason why Here’s but to do or die. Hark to the battle-cry _Failure or apple pie!_ Come, valiant comrades! I guess when they got these invitations they thought we were all maniacs from Maine, hey? What did _we_ care? Not in the least, quoth we. After we got the invitations mailed we decided to forget the moving problem and go to the moving pictures. After that we went to the station and sat in the car a little while and talked. As long as we were so near we thought we might as well go over to Bennett’s for cones, and as long as we were in there for cones we thought we might as well get some gumdrops. And as long as we were getting some gumdrops we thought we might as well get some molasses taffy for our young hero so as to stop him from talking. Believe me, that’s one thing I like. I don’t mean talking, I mean molasses taffy. I’m stuck on it. So is the tissue paper that comes around it. We got a nickel’s worth of lemondrops, too, because yellow is our patrol color. We’re always thinking of our patrol, that’s one good thing about us. CHAPTER VIII—RECONNOITERING