snailsdale manor had a real station, as befitted a town of five thousand people. it had all modern improvements, including a tin water cooler and a posting board with a three-year-old time-table tacked on it.
posted here also was an announcement which attracted pee-wee’s attention. he was sagacious enough to read the date first of all to make sure that the magnificent affair advertised had not already taken place, for the announcement might have pertained to some gala celebration of a prehistoric age.
old home week
at
snailsdale manor!
come one come all
saturday, july 10th, 1921.
gorgeous parade
fireworks at night.
come everybody!
pee-wee read this announcement while he and his mother waited for mr. goodale.
now if there was one thing more than another dear to the heart of scout harris it was a parade. not that such an affair constituted anything in the way of a novelty in his young life, for indeed his whole career was one grand, triumphal procession. when he walked down the street it was a parade. when he went to scout meeting in his full regalia, including his aluminum cooking set, it was a veritable pageant. some said that pee-wee was more than a parade, that he was a circus.
be that as it might, there was nothing, excepting a fire, which pee-wee so adored as a parade. and he contemplated this announcement with thrilling anticipations.
“i’m going to be there,” he said to his mother; “i’m going to be in it. i’m going to be in the fireworks, too.”
exactly how he meant to be “in” the fireworks he did not explain, but perhaps he expected his propensity for going up in the air to help him in that particular. he was presently to give a demonstration of his proficiency in aerial flight, for he heard a voice close behind him say:
“you can’t be in it because you don’t belong here. you’re waiting for farmer goodale, and his place is seven miles from here, and there aren’t any people there anyway, and he only has one horse. they’re asleep down there, only they haven’t got sense enough to lie down.”
pee-wee turned and beheld a boy of about fifteen, wearing a regulation suit and regulation straw hat and a regulation scarf and white collar, and a regulation handkerchief nattily folded in the regulation way and projecting out of his breast pocket. he presented a singular contrast to pee-wee, who was in scout negligee, his broad-brimmed hat far enough back on his head to expose his curly hair, the raven patrol scarf tied loosely about his neck, with a compass as big as a watch dangling from the knotted ends of it.
“do you think i can’t find my way from mr. goodale’s?” he demanded, as if that were the only condition of participating officially in the festivities. “lots of times i’ve been as far as fifty miles from civilization and i can always find my way. i bet you’re not a scout.”
“i wouldn’t be one,” said the youth.
“maybe you couldn’t,” pee-wee retorted, “because you’re kind of civilized. gee whiz, i used to be that way, but you don’t have any fun. i bet you hang around the post office waiting for mail. i can tell by looking at you, but we don’t bother with mail, because we write on birch bark.”
“i wouldn’t spoil my fountain pen writing on birch bark,” said the civilized youth.
“that shows how much you know about scouts!” pee-wee said with withering scorn. “fountain pens are no good; you’re supposed to write with charred wood. if you’re mad you can use beet juice for ink, because that’s red and it means anger; only scouts don’t get mad,” he added cautiously.
“what’s your name?” the stranger asked, contemplating pee-wee curiously.
“walter collison bately harris, r.p., f.b.t., b.s.a. i bet you don’t know what that means. what’s yours?”
“everett braggen.”
“do you live here?”
“do you think i’d live in a place like this? no, i board here. but it’s better than where you’re going. that’s away, way off in the woods and there’s nobody there and it’s too far to walk—”
“you mean hike,” pee-wee said.
“anyway, you won’t have any fun down there,” said master braggen consolingly; “but you couldn’t get into our hotel, because it’s full and all the places here are full and we’re going to have a big tennis tournament next week and our hotel is going to win it because two fellows from hydome university are coming to our hotel and they’re champions. you can come and see the tournament but you can’t be in the parade, because how could you go in it all alone?
“all the farms and boarding houses around here are getting up floats; ours is going to be the best. it’s going to be all decorated with bunting and paper lanterns and it’s going to be like grass on it and it’s going to represent our lawn. it’s going to have wicker chairs with people sitting in them and a girl is going to be lying in a hammock reading and i’m going to be sitting at a little wire table playing cards with another fellow. it’s going to have snailsdale house above it. we’re going to win the prize and we’re going to win the tennis tournament too. it’s a good joke, because nobody knows that those two chaps from hydome university are coming to our house. if i see you watching the parade i’ll wave my hand to you.”
the thought of this conventional youngster waving his hand condescendingly from his throne of glory was too much for pee-wee. that rolling scene of complacent ease and comfort was terrible enough. but that everett braggen should look down from his card playing to wave a polite ta-ta to pee-wee was more than our hero could bear. and he resolved then and there that he would organize a float bodying forth a scene so wild and blood-curdling as to strike terror to the whole brood of letter-writing, hammock-lounging, card-playing denizens who infested snailsdale manor. from his obscure retreat he would deal a mortal blow to civilization, the worst kind of civilization; he would deal this post office loitering and waiting-for-the-dinner bell business one tremendous stroke from which it would never recover.
he did not know how he was going to do this, but he was going to do it....
