Pee-Wee Harris | Page 7

have to go back.
You listen to-morrow morning."
"They could never wake me up," Pee-Wee said, which was probably
true. "What do you mean about their saying you have to go back?"
"When Aunt Jamsiah took me, I was a probator. Do you know what
that means?"
"It's what they do with people's wills," Pee-Wee said.
"It means if I don't behave I have to go back to the orphan home," the
girl said. "And every day I was afraid I'd have to go back--for a long,
long time, I was. And when I was lying in bed mornings I'd hear the
planks saying that--

You have to go back, You have to go back.
just like that, and I'd get good and scared."
"You won't have to go back," said Pee-Wee.
"You leave it to me, I'll fix it. Those planks--I've known lots of
planks--and they can't tell the truth. Don't you care. I wouldn't believe
what an old plank said. Trees are all right, but planks--"
"I don't notice it so much now," Pepsy said; "that was a year ago and
Aunt Jamsiah says I'm all right and mind good except I'm a tomboy.
That ain't so bad, is it? Being a tomboy? A girl and me tried to set the
orphan home on fire because they licked us, but I'm good here. But I
wish they'd put a new floor on that bridge. Anyway, Aunt Jamsiah says
I'm good now."
Pee-Wee was about to speak, but noticing that the girl's eyes were fixed
upon a crimson patch on the hillside where the sun was going down,
and seeing that her eyes sparkled strangely (for indeed they were not
pretty eyes) he said nothing, like the bully little scout that he was.
"Anyway, one thing, I wouldn't let an old bridge get my goat, I
wouldn't," he said finally, "and besides, you said you would show me a
woodchuck hole."
CHAPTER VI
THE WAY OF THE SCOUT
Pepsy's right name was Penelope Pepperall and Aunt Jamsiah had taken
her out of the County Home after the fire episode, by way of saving her
from the worse influence of a reformatory. She and Uncle Ebenezer
had agreed to be responsible for the girl, and Pepsy had spent a year of
joyous freedom at the farm marred only by the threat hanging over her
that she would be restored to the authorities upon the least suspicion of
misconduct.

She had done her work faithfully and become a help and a comfort to
her benefactors. She had a snappy temper and a sharp tongue and was,
indeed, something of a tomboy. But Aunt Jamsiah, though often
annoyed and sometimes chagrined, took a charitable view of these
shortcomings and her generous heart was not likely to confound them
with genuine misdoing.
So the stern condition of Pepsy's freedom had become something of a
dead letter, except in her own fearful fancy, and particularly when that
discordant voice of the bridge spoke ominously of her peril.
Pepsy had been trusted and had proven worthy of the trust. She had
never known any mother or father, nor any home save the institution
from which Aunt Jamsiah had rescued her, and she had grown to love
her kindly guardians and the old farm where she had much work but
also much freedom. "Chores will keep her out of mischief," Aunt
Jamsiah had said.
Wiggle's ancestry and social standing were quite as much a mystery as
Pepsy's; he was not an aristocrat, that is certain, and having no
particular chores to do was free to devote his undivided time to
mischief; he concentrated on it, as the saying is, and thereby
accomplished wonders. He was Pepsy's steady comrade and the partner
of all her adventurous escapades.
Pepsy was not romantic and imaginative, her freckled face and tightly
braided red hair and thin legs with wrinkled cotton stockings, protested
against that. She had a simple mind with a touch of superstition. It was
a kind of morbid dread of the institution she had left which had
conjured that ramshackle old bridge up on the highway into an ominous
voice of warning, She hated the bridge and dreaded it as a thing
haunted.
Pee-Wee soon became close friends with these two, and from a rather
cautious and defensive beginning Pepsy soon fell victim to the spell of
the little scout, as indeed everyone else did. Pepsy did not surrender
without a struggle. She showed Pee-Wee the woodchuck hole and
Pee-Wee, after a minute's skillful search, showed her the other hole, or

back entrance, under a stone wall.
"There are always two," he told her, "and one of them is usually under
a stone wall. They're smart, woodchucks are."
"Are they as smart as you?" she wanted to know.
"Smarter," Pee-Wee admitted,