"Let me--let me see the badge," little Skinny insisted.

But already Hervey had handed the badge over to his troop. Probably he
thought that it would interfere with his climbing trees or perhaps fall
off when he was hanging upside down from some treacherous limb or
scrambling head foremost down some dizzy cliff. No doubt it would be
more or less in the way during his stuntful career....




CHAPTER XXIV

THE RED STREAK


There was one resident at Temple Camp who did not attend that memorable
meeting by reason of being sound asleep at the time. This was Orestes,
the oriole, who had had such a narrow squeak of it up at the foot of the
mountain. Orestes always went to bed early and got up early, being in
all ways a model scout.

It is true that just at the moment when the cheering became tumultuous,
Orestes shook out her feathers and peered out of the little door of her
hanging nest but, seeing no near-by peril, settled down again to sweet
slumber, never dreaming that the cheering was in honor of her scout
rescuer.

The housing problem did not trouble Orestes much. One tree was as good