“You a Boy Scout?” he asked.

With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.

The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.

“Get in,” he commanded.

When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to Jimmie’s disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit.  Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling indignantly, crawled.

“I never saw a Boy Scout before,” announced the old young man.  “Tell me about it.  First, tell me what you do when you’re not scouting.”

Jimmie explained volubly.  When not in uniform he was an office boy, and from peddlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings, stock-brokers.  He spoke the names of his employers with awe.  It was a firm distinguished, conservative, and long established.  The white-haired young man seemed to nod in assent.

“Do you know them?” demanded Jimmie suspiciously.  “Are you a customer of ours?”

“I know them,” said the young man.  “They are customers of mine.”

Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the white-haired young man.  Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmie guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher.  Jimmie continued.  He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundred and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school; he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earned vacation camping out on Hunter’s Island, where he would cook his own meals, and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.

“And you like that?” demanded the young man.  “You call that fun?”

“Sure!” protested Jimmie.  “Don’t you go camping out?”

“I go camping out,” said the good Samaritan, “whenever I leave New York.”

Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand that the young man spoke in metaphor.

“You don’t look,” objected the young man critically, “as though you were built for the strenuous life.”

Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.

“You ought ter see me two weeks from now,” he protested.  “I get all sunburnt and hard—­hard as anything!”

The young man was incredulous.

“You were near getting sunstruck when I picked you up,” he laughed.  “If you’re going to Hunter’s Island, why didn’t you go to Pelham Manor?”

“That’s right!” assented Jimmie eagerly.  “But I wanted to save the ten cents so’s to send Sadie to the movies.  So I walked.”

The young man looked his embarrassment.

“I beg your pardon,” he murmured.

But Jimmie did not hear him.  From the back of the car he was dragging excitedly at the hated suitcase.

“Stop!” he commanded.  “I got ter get out.  I got ter walk.”