Pee-Wee Harris Adrift | Page 2

because scouts like fresh air,"
Pee-wee said. "I got a lot of ideas."
"He thinks Airedales are named after the air," said Doc Carson.
"Sure, just the same as Pennsylvania is named after the Pennsylvania
Railroad," Roy said.
"You make me tired!" Pee-wee shouted disgustedly. "You leave it to
me, I'll think up a name. I know four fellers already that'll join. Maybe
I'll decide to start a whole new troop and not bother with this one."
"Why don't you start a whole new scout movement?" Roy asked. "Call
it the Boy Scouts of Pee-wee Harris. Discharge the Boy Scouts of
America altogether."
"I'll start something all right, you leave it to me," Pee-wee announced
darkly. "You think you're smart just because you write stories about
your adventures and you always make out that you're the hero. You
always make out that I get the worst of it. Gee whiz, if I ever write any
stories, I'll get my just deserts."
"Did I ever say you didn't get plenty of desserts?" Roy shot back at him.
"I gave you three helpings in every story and that's all the thanks I get.
You think so much about desserts that you're going to desert the troop.
We should worry."
"If I write any stories I'll write them good and loud," Pee-wee shouted.
"Open the cut-out of your fountain pen," Roy said, "and be sure to turn
to the right whenever you come to the end of a page and look out you
don't skid."
"Maybe I'll write my remittances," Pee-wee said darkly.

"He means his reminiscences," said Arrie Van Arlen.
"I think," said Mr. Ellsworth, "that Scout Harris will be quite busy
enough forming the new patrol, and when it is formed I hope he will
present it to the First Bridgeboro Troop, B. S. A."
"That's us," said Westy Martin.
"I don't see how Pee-wee can get out of the troop," Mr. Ellsworth
laughed, "because strictly speaking, he has never been in the troop; on
the contrary the troop has been in him, as one might say."
"Good night, did he swallow that too?" said Roy. And he rolled
backward off the troop-room table on which he had been sitting.
CHAPTER II
SATURDAY MORNING
Though Pee-wee was without a patrol he was by no means without a
troop. He still held his position of troop mascot and official target for
the mirthful Silver Foxes. He was a whole patrol in himself and held
his own against raillery and banter, his stock of retaliatory ammunition
seeming never to be exhausted.
"I can handle them with both hands tied behind my back," he boasted,
which is readily enough believed since it was mainly his tongue that he
used.
But recruits did not flock to Pee-wee's standard. Perhaps this was partly
because of the fall and winter season when the lure of camping and
roughing it was in abeyance. Perhaps it was because he was so small
that boys were fain to think that scouting was a thing for children and
beneath their dignity.
Once or twice during the winter, Pee-wee piloted some half-convinced
and bashful subject to the troop-room, which was an old railroad car (of
fond memory) down by the river. Here, in the cosy warmth of the old

cylinder stove, the troop played checkers and read and jollied Pee-wee,
which was about all there was to do on winter nights. The visitors,
unimpressed with these makeshift diversions of the off season, did not
return, and so the good old springtime found Pee-wee still a scout
indeed (with something left over) but a scout without a patrol.
And now the sturdy little missionary began to feel this keenly. Patrol
spirit is usually not much in evidence during the winter; the several
divisions of a troop intermingle and form a sort of club in which an odd
member is quite at home. But with the coming of spring the patrol spirit
becomes aroused. It is a case of "united we stand, divided we sprawl,"
as Roy Blakeley was fond of saying. Each patrol goes separately about
its preparations for camping and hiking, does its shopping, repairs its
tents, denounces and ridicules its associate patrols, and troop unity
gives way somewhat to patrol unity. This is well and as it should be.
It was very much so with the well organized Bridgeboro troop. With
the first breath of spring the Ravens became Ravens, the Elks
foregathered and were Elks and nothing else, and the Silver Foxes
began a series of exclusive meetings at Camp Solitaire under a big
shady elm on Roy's lawn.
The Silver Foxes, imbibing the mirthful spirit of their leader, were all
pretty much alike, and the Ravens were thankful that they were not like
them, and the Elks congratulated themselves that they