Pee-Wee Harris | Page 9

cents
but I spent it at the Mammoth Carnival. I paid ten cents to throw six
balls so I could get a funny doll and I never hit the doll and when I only
had ten cents left I made believe the doll was Deadwood Gamely and I
hated and hated with all my might while I threw the ball the last six
times but I couldn't hit the doll."
"You can't aim so good when you're mad," Pee-Wee said, "so if you
want to hit somebody with a tomato or an egg or anything like that you
just have kind thoughts about the person that you're aiming at, only
you're not supposed to throw tomatoes and eggs and things because you
can have more fun eating them. I wouldn't waste a tomato on that feller
because anyway you've got your tongue."
"You can't sass him," said Pepsy, "because he uses big words and he's
such a smarty and he makes you feel silly and then you begin to cry
and get mad. When he says I'm an orphan and things--and
things--Wiggle hates him, too, don't you, Wiggle?" The girl was almost
crying then and Pee-Wee comforted her.

"Do you think I don't know any long words?" he said. "I know some of
the longest words that were ever invented and--and--even I can make
special ones myself. Once I--don't you cry--once I was kept in school
and Julia Carson was kept in too, because she wriggled in her seat--you
know how girls do. I had to choose a word and write it a hundred times
and I didn't want to get through too soon, because I wanted to get out
the same time she did. So I chose the word incomprehensibility, and
I--"
"Is that girl pretty?" Pepsy wanted to know.
"She's got a wart on her finger. It's the best one I ever saw," Pee-Wee
said. "She's afraid to get in a boat, that girl is."
"I hate her," Pepsy said.
"What for?" Pee-Wee inquired. "Because she has a wart? Don't you
know it's good luck to have warts?"
"Because--because she was bad and had to stay after school," Pepsy
said.
"That shows how much you know about logic," Pee-Wee said,
"because I had to stay too and I was worse than she was. So there."
"I wouldn't be afraid to get in a boat," Pepsy said proudly.
"I never said she was like you," Pee-Wee declared. "She's not a
tomboy."
Pepsy seemed comforted.
"You leave that feller to me," Pee-Wee said. "I can handle Roy
Blakeley and all his patrol and they're a lot of jolliers--they think
they're so smart."
"I like you better than all of them," Pepsy said. "Sometimes I'm kept
after school too, you can ask Miss Bellison."

"One thing sure, I like you well enough to be partners with you,"
Pee-Wee said. "Do you want me to tell you something? I thought of a
way to make a lot of money, and if I do I'm going to buy three new
tents for our troop. Do you want to go partners with me? We'll say the
tents are from both of us and we'll have a lot of fun."
"I had a dollar once and I sent it to the heathens," Pepsy said, "and I'd
rather help you than the heathens, because I like you better."
"Heathens are all right," Pee-Wee said, "and I'm not saying anything
against heathens, especially wild ones, but we're just as wild. You
ought to go to Temple Camp and see how wild we are."
He did not look very wild as he sat upon the narrow seat with his knees
drawn up and his scout hat on the back of his head showing his curly
hair.
The girl gazed at his natty khaki attire, the row of merit badges on his
sleeve, the trophies of his heroic triumphs. She was not the first to feel
the lure of a uniform. But it was the first uniform she had ever seen at
close range, for in the wartime she had been in that frowning brick
structure which still haunted her.
"I'll help you because you can do everything and you know a lot," she
said.
In the fullness of her generosity and loyalty to Pee-Wee's prowess she
never reminded him or even thought of the things she could do which
he could not. She would not do her little optional chore of milking a
cow for fear he might perceive her superiority in this little item of
proficiency. Poor girl, she was a better scout than she knew.
"If you think it up I'll do all the work, and then we'll be even," she said.
So Pee-Wee told her of the colossal scheme which his lively
imagination had conceived.
"It all