Pee-Wee Harris Adrift | Page 9

some Eskimo pies, too."
"Der yez swipe de pertaters?" Joe asked.
"We don't exactly kind of what you would call swipe them," Pee-wee
was forced to confess. "But we get them in ways that are just as good.
They taste just as good as if they were swiped, honest they do," he
hastened to add. "So will you come down by the river with me? That
old railroad car down there is our meeting place and it's got a stove in it
and everything and there won't be any one there to-day except just you
and me and we'll have an election and I'll vote for you and you can vote
for yourself and so you'll be sure to be elected patrol leader. And after
that I'll show you what you have to do and most of it is eating and
things like that. So will you say yes?"
Keekie Joe was not to be lured by promises of "eats," though he was
curious about the old railroad car. His answer to Pee-wee was
characteristic of him. "I woudn' join 'em, because they're a lot of
sissies," he said, "but yer needn' be ascared ter come down here
because I woudn' leave no guy hurt yer; I woudn' leave 'em guy yer
because yer a Boy Scout. If any of 'em starts guyen yer he'll get an
upper cut, see?"
Pee-wee went on his way thoroughly disappointed and disheartened.
His thought was not that he had made a friend, but that he had lost a
possible recruit. He had cherished no thought of reforming the wicked
and uplifting the lowly in his effort to enlist this outlandish denizen of
the slums. He was not the goody-goody little scout propagandist that
we sometimes read about. He had simply been desperate and had lost
all sense of discrimination. Anything would do if he could only start a
patrol. What this sturdy little scout failed to understand was that in this
particular enterprise the Boy Scouts had lost out but that Pee-wee
Harris had won.
CHAPTER VII

APPLE BLOSSOM TIME
Pee-wee stopped in Bennett's Fresh Confectionery and regaled his
drooping spirit with a chocolate soda. Then he continued his stroll up
Main Street. He had always advertised his conviction that things
invariably came his way but nothing came his way on this lonely
Saturday morning.
He paused here and there gazing idly into shop windows, he stood
gaping at a man who was having trouble with his auto, and at last he
wandered into the public library. The place seemed like a tomb on that
Saturday morning in the springtime. Not a boy was there to be seen.
"Gee whiz, they've got something better to do than read books," he
thought to himself.
There at the desk sat the librarian, silent, preoccupied. In the reading
room were a few scattered readers intent on newspapers and magazines.
The place, familiar and pleasant enough to Pee-wee at other times,
seemed alien and uninviting at a time of day when he was usually too
busy to call upon its quiet resources of treasure.
On this balmy holiday it seemed almost like school; it had a booky,
studious atmosphere which turned him against it. And to complete this
impression and make the place abhorrent to him there sat Miss Bunting,
the history teacher, in a corner of the reference room with several books
spread about her. To Pee-wee on Saturday morning this seemed
nothing less than an insult.
He approached a shelf near the librarian's desk above which was a sign
that read BOOKS ESPECIALLY RECOMMENDED. Here were
always a few old time favorites, worth while books made readily
available. From these Pee-wee half-heartedly drew out a copy of
Treasure Island and took it to a table. He knew his Treasure Island. In a
disgruntled mood he sank far down in his chair and opened the book at
random. He was too familiar with the enthralling pages of the famous
story to seek solace in it now, but there was nothing else to do and he
was too out of sorts to search further. Presently he was idly skimming
over the page before him.

The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was
altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly failed, we had
made a great deal of way during the night, and were now lying
becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast.
Gray-colored woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint
was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sandbreak in the lower lands,
and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others--some
singly, some in clumps; but the general coloring was uniform and sad.
The hills ran up . .