so miss hope stillmore was launched upon the sea of adventure in a rocking chair with scout harris for pilot. she abandoned the study of monotony for the study of carpentry, interior and exterior decoration, botany, photography, stalking, signalling, tracking, and a variety of other scout arts.
it was pee-wee’s fate in life to be accepted as a substitute for something better because he was amusing. he did not object to this because, as he said, he had plenty of fun just the same. being small and full of enterprises entirely disproportionate to his size, he was acceptable everywhere and universally liked. girls thought he was “excruciating” and “adorable.” men were greatly taken with him and liked to hear him talk. at temple camp, where he and his scout troop spent the summers, he was called the mascot, sometimes the animal cracker. pee-wee had not an enemy. more than that, he had none but friends.
but he had never had a pal. he had called many boys, and some girls, his “particular chums,” but these chums had lived elsewhere than in pee-wee’s home town; they were the friends of his holiday adventures and enterprises. they, on their part, had fast and steady chums whom they returned to.
each summer pee-wee had a particular chum at temple camp. but he had no pal in his scout troop or out of it. you see that was because pee-wee was a mascot and not to be taken seriously. they liked to have him along when there were two or three others in the party. but no one fellow sought him out. he would stand as much jollying as a ford will stand abuse. perhaps, after all, it was just because he was small and rather unique that he stood alone. he was too generous, or perhaps too busy, to resent it when some companion of a month or so deserted him for more important things. was he not himself always jumping from one scheme to another?
so, perhaps, he did not exactly speak out of the depths of his heart when he proposed that he and hope stillmore be pals. perhaps she did not answer him out of the depths of her heart when she told him that they certainly would.
at all events, they certainly were pals. hope was not averse to exploring the woods, and pee-wee was certainly not averse to imparting his knowledge of woods lore.
“i thought you told me girls couldn’t keep secrets,” she said as she picked her way through the thicket to see a thrush which he had promised to find for her observation. “now you’re telling me all the secrets of the woods. that shows you’re a telltale. so there!”
“that’s different,” pee-wee said; “you can tell everything you want to about the woods. do you know how i can tell we’re walking north? on account of the moss growing on the north sides of the trees. squirrels build on the north sides of trees, too. so, gee whiz, you needn’t worry, we can’t get lost.”
“here’s a squirrel’s nest on one side with some moss on the other,” said hope innocently.
“that shows how crazy some squirrels are,” pee-wee said. “they don’t even know the north when they see it.”
“they should carry compasses like you,” hope laughed.
“safety first,” pee-wee answered, “but if that compass should get lost—”
“i shouldn’t think a compass could get lost; it always points to the north,” hope said.
“i mean if i lost it,” pee-wee said, as he trudged along ahead of her. “but you needn’t worry because it can’t get lost; see?” indeed, such a calamity seemed unlikely for the compass dangled from a rope necklace not much slenderer than a clothesline.
“i shan’t worry as long as i’m with you,” she said.
“gee whiz, i’ve rescued maidens before,” he said.
“maidens?”
“sure, they’re the same as girls.”
“and when are we going to see a thrush?”
“pretty soon i’ll find you one. the male ones are always handsomer than the female ones, that’s always the way it is. but that doesn’t mean i’m better looking than you. gee whiz, you’re awful pretty, everybody says so.”
“now you’re going to make me conceited. is that boy in snailsdale manor good looking? the one with the suit of clothes?”
“gee, i guess maybe you’d say so; he’s all dressed up; he has his handkerchief all sticking out of his pocket and everything. scouts have no use for those things because they’re kind of wild.”
“did you ask him to come down here and see you?”
“naah, because he’s busy with the parade and the tennis match and a lot of things. anyway, we’ll get up a float to beat the snailsdale house, hey? i’ve got an inspiration. do you know what that is?”
“i’m afraid we can’t decorate a float because we haven’t got any to decorate—”
“that’s nothing. you didn’t have anything to do till i showed you how to—”
“fall off the chair and hurt my knee?”
“that’s nothing, i know a girl that broke her arm.”
“oh, how dreadful!”
“so, will you help me with the float? because i want to show that feller, he’s so fresh.”
“is he tall?”
“tallness doesn’t count,” said pee-wee.
“is he light or dark?”
“do you mean is he a colored feller?”
“oh, gracious no! i mean what color is his hair? you say scouts are so observant.”
“they’re observant about—kind of—about—you know—about natural things.”
“oh, has he got false hair?”
suddenly pee-wee had an inspiration. “i couldn’t see his hair on account of his having a straw hat over it,” he said.
“everybody that stays at the snailsdale house is rich,” said hope wistfully. “they have dances there every night. do you know how to dance?”
“sure,” said pee-wee, “i’ll teach you. i know an indian war dance. i know the dance that the cannibals dance, too. do you want to learn it?”
“oh, horrors, no!”
“so will you help me with the float?” he asked after his erratic fashion of rebounding to the main subject. “do you know where the hay wagon stands? under that crazy old kind of a building? the one on stilts?”
“with corn-husks in it?” hope asked.
“i don’t know what’s in it,” pee-wee continued excitedly, “but, anyway, it’s all old and rotten and it’s no good except to keep the hay wagon under. so i’m going to ask mr. goodale to let it down onto the hay wagon, all he’ll have to do is kind of to saw off the legs. see? even he can put it back if he wants to. and then we’ll decorate it all up and put a great big sign on that says goodale manor farm and we’ll get the oxen and you can drive them if you want to and we’ll drive up to snailsdale manor and join the parade. so will you? because all the houses are going to have floats in that parade. and, gee whiz, that’ll be something to do, won’t it? you bet i’m not going to stand in the street and have that feller waving his hand to me from a float—i’m not, you can bet. not that feller.”
“you just dislike him because he dressed like a young gentleman,” said hope.
pee-wee scented her unfavorable decision in this matter and groping in his fertile mind, dragged up a blighting argument.
“you want him to be dressed like a gentleman, don’t you? sure, you as much as said so. you like the way he has his handkerchief all tucked nice and pretty in his pocket. suppose he should pull that out and wave it at me! that would spoil it all, wouldn’t it? so will you say you’ll do it—and cross your heart?”
“i don’t know how to drive oxen,” she said, hedging.
“all you have to do is keep saying ‘gee’,” said pee-wee. “so will you do it?”
“no, i won’t,” said hope, “because it’s silly. we haven’t got any money and we haven’t got lots of people and everybody would just laugh at our float. that boy would just laugh at us.”
“that shows how much you know about scouts,” pee-wee said; “they’re supposed to spread laughter.”
“well, i’m not going to have people laughing at me,” said hope. “i’d rather come hiking in the woods like this—if i can’t do the things i want to do,” she added.
“you don’t need any money to have fun,” pee-wee said, loud enough so the very woods echoed this magnificent truth. “as long as we have fun, what do we care what people say?”
“well, i care,” hope said, “and i’m not going to be a silly. everybody up in town would laugh at this poky old place if we went in the parade. so let’s forget about it and look for the thrush. nobody’ll laugh at us here, anyway, even if we don’t have any excitement.”
but miss hope stillmore was presently to have excitement enough to last her for several days. and that without the presence of dancing and grown-up boys. she was to learn that the woods were not quite as “poky” as she had thought. and incidentally she was to learn something about scouts, too....
