Pee-Wee Harris | Page 8

let it go, Wiggle," Pee-Wee said. "If you want to be a scout you can't kill anything that doesn't do any harm. But you can kill snakes and mosquitoes if you want to." Evidently it was the dream of Wiggle's life to be a scout for he released the locust to Pee-Wee, wagging his tail frantically.
"You have to be loyal, too," the young propagandist said; "that's a rule. You have to be helpful and think up ways to help people. No matter what happens you have to be loyal."
"Do you have to be loyal to orphan homes?" Pepsy wanted to know. "If they lick you do you have to be loyal to them?"
Here was a poser for the scout. But being small Pee-Wee was able to wriggle out of almost anything. "You have to be loyal where loyalty is due," he said. "That's what the rule says; it's Rule Two. But, anyway, there's another rule and that's Rule Seven and it says you have to be kind. You can't be kind licking people, that's one sure thing. So it's a technicality that you don't have to be loyal to an orphan home. You can ask any lawyer because that's what you call logic."
"Deadwood Gamely's father is a lawyer," Pepsy said, "and I hate Deadwood Gamely and I wouldn't go to his house to ask his father. He's a smarty and I hit him with a tomato. Have I got a right to do that--if he's a smarty?"
Here was another legal technicality, but Pee-Wee was equal to the occasion. "A--a scout has to be a--he has to have a good aim," he said.
CHAPTER VII
A BIG IDEA
They had been driving the cows home during this learned exposition on scouting. Two things were now perfectly clear to Pepsy's simple mind. One, that she would be loyal at any cost, loyal to her new friend, and through him to all the scouts. She knew them only through him. They were a race of wonder-workers away off in the surging metropolis of Bridgeboro. She could not aspire to be one of them, but she could be loyal, she could "stick up" for them.
The other matter which was now settled, once and for all, was that it was all right to throw a tomato at a person you hated provided only that you hit the mark. Aunt Jamsiah had been all wrong in her anger at that exploit which had stirred the village. For to throw a tomato at the son of Lawyer Gamely was aiming very high.
The son of Lawyer Gamely had a Ford and worked in the bank at Baxter City and was a mighty sport who wore white collars and red ties and said that "Everdoze was asleep and didn't have brains enough to lie down," and all such stuff.
Pee-Wee let down the bars while the patient cows waited, and Scout Wiggle (knowing that a scout should be helpful) gave the last cow a snip on the leg to help her along.
Here, at these rustic bars, ended Pepsy's chores for the day and in the delightful interval before supper she and Pee-Wee lolled in the well house by the roadside. Wiggle, with characteristic indecision, chased the cows a few yards, returned to his companions, darted off to chase the cows again, deserted that pastime with erratic suddenness, and returned again wagging his tail and looking up intently as if to ask, "What next?" Then he lay down panting. Mr. Ellsworth, Pee-Wee's scoutmaster, would have said that Wiggle lacked method. ...
"If I had a lot of money," Pepsy said, "you could teach me all the things that scouts know and I'd pay you ever so much. Once I had forty 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