Pee-Wee Harris | Page 9

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 started with a hot frankfurter," he said. "If I hadn't bought a hot frankfurter I wouldn't have thought of it. So that shows you how important a frankfurter is--kind of. Maybe a person might get to be a millionaire just starting with a frankfurter, you never can tell. ..."
CHAPTER VIII
MAKING PLANS
"I bought that frankfurter at a shack up on the highway and while I was eating it I just happened to think that as long as there's lots of fruit and things here and as long as you know how to make fudge, we'd start a shack right here in this well house and sell lemonade and fruit and fudge and cookies and things, and if we make lots of money I'd go up to Baxter City and buy some auto accessories like spark plugs and tire tape and things and we'd sell those, too. We'd put signs on the trees along the road telling people to stop here and I know how to make up signs so as to get people good and hungry. You have them say that things are hot in the pan and you have to have drinks with names like arctic and all like that. I know how to make them