Читать книгу Pee-Wee Harris, Warrior Bold - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

Table of Contents

There were to be great doings in East Village, just across the river from Bridgeboro. The young ladies of the Community league were to hold a grand lawn party. In connection with this was to be a bazaar and cake sale. There was to be an entertainment in the evening followed by dancing. The East Village troop of Girl Scouts was to participate, and be much in evidence selling birch-bark ornaments and other woodland handiwork.

Post-card pictures of the new Community House were to sell at five cents each. All this was to celebrate and help to finance the rustic bungalow, lately completed, which thenceforth would house the gaieties of East Village.

We see our hero first emerging with the throng from the Eureka Theater in Bridgeboro after having satiated himself with the sensational photoplay, “As Luck Would Have It.”

In these periods of relaxation, to which Pee-Wee occasionally treated himself, he is not discovered in his customary martial regalia. To be sure he wore his Scout suit and his compass dangling around his neck. But his belt axe and frying-pan were conspicuously absent. However, his most characteristic item of adornment, his appalling frown, darkened his heroic countenance, and became even more terrible as he gazed upon a little scene which greeted the outpouring crowd as it emerged upon the sidewalk.

There was more true pathos and human interest in this little scene than in anything that had occurred in the garish screen play with its maudlin episodes and sobby subtitles. The center of interest was a shabby little old man who stood upon the curb where apparently he had taken his stand to catch the notice of the people as they came out of the theater. On a tray which was held up by a strap around his neck were displayed a number of gaudily painted little windmills and weather-vanes, evidently of his own manufacture. He also held aloft in one hand the model of a ship, his prize commodity, a marvel of skill with the jack-knife.

As Pee-Wee emerged onto the sidewalk this quaint and aged vendor was being rudely shoved away by a policeman, and not the least pathetic part of this brusquely authoritative business was the sudden disarray of the little stock. He moved along reluctantly under pressure of the official arm, holding his precious ship aloft to save it from wreckage at the hands of the law.

“G’wan, move along, git outer here!” urged the officer, accompanying his mandate with a vigorous shove. He would not even suffer the old man to pause long enough to recover a fallen windmill.

The crowd appeared sympathetic, but not greatly interested. Another shove by the official arm and the old man’s entire stock was precipitated to the sidewalk. But he was not permitted to tarry long enough to gather up his precious handiwork.

“G’wan, beat it or I’ll lock yer up,” threatened the cop, giving a vigorous final push which all but sent the poor old man sprawling.

This is the regulation way of dealing with peddlers, and few people take note of the needless brutality visited upon them. Perhaps it was this particular peddler’s age and apparent infirmities which moved some of the emerging crowd to venture deprecatory comments; perhaps it was a certain picturesqueness about him and his quaint handiwork which caused a venturesome young woman to utter discreet protest.

But it was Pee-Wee Harris who took a double-header into the sordid little affair and staggered even the brass-buttoned autocrat with his thunderous tirade. As for the poor little old man he stared aghast at this Scout of Scouts in full action.

“You think you’re so smart shoving a poor old man,” Pee-Wee thundered, “that you have to go and break the law yourself on account of what it says, I can prove it, how you got a right not to let any litter be in the streets, and anyway you’re the cause of it. Now you see!”

“You think you are so smart shoving a poor old man,” Pee-Wee thundered

It was Pee-Wee’s sprightly way to disregard punctuation in his talk, and this was particularly so in his tirades of wrath.

“Dat’s enough fer you, Sonny,” said the cop ominously, and giving the old man another vigorous shove, “run home ter yer mamma before yer git in trouble now—and keep yer mouth shut.”

That was something Pee-Wee could not do. “You big—you big coward,” he roared. “That shows how much you don’t know about laws and all things like that how you spill stuff all over the sidewalk even you don’t know the Clean-up Orderlinance I mean Ordinance do you think I don’t know, geeeeeee whiz, wasn’t I mayor for a day, how even I fined people for littering up the streets, you can ask the Clean-up Committee.”

He paused just long enough to dig up out of his pocket a circular celluloid badge twice as large as a half-dollar, the treasured souvenir of his sensational work in the great clean-up campaign. This he ostentatiously pinned once again upon his jacket. “Now you see,” he said darkly. “Now you see if I got a right to talk to you.”

The crowd was highly amused. “I got a paper too,” Pee-Wee said, “that says if I complain to a cop no matter what, he’s got to listen to me. Even I had a man arrested for leaving an old flat tire in the street—that shows. Even I was a school traffic cop myself, I was! Even I was boy mayor for one day, I was! So now you got to pick up the stuff you spilled all over the ground because I can make a complaint about you I don’t care if you’re a cop or not because I’m a special boy officer I am, and I’m the one that put rubbish barrels down in Barrel Alley and at the station and everything and I got charge of vacant lots you can ask Judge Wade if I haven’t and they got to listen to me.”

They could hardly help listening to him, and moreover all this was too true.

He had indeed been a clean-up worker in the great campaign and had used all the authority with which he had been vested.

“So now,” he concluded almost exhausted, “are you going to pick up the things or not? Because I can dodge a complaint I mean lodge one, and then you’ll see!”

Here, indeed, was David talking to Goliath.

“Talk about spilling,” laughed a man. “He spills words enough.”

The cop did not obey, but he compromised. He recalled, now, the sensational achievements of Scout Harris in the grand clean-up drive. This unquenchable youngster with the enormous celluloid badge might do anything—and get away with it. So the officer retreated as much as he could without sacrificing his dignity. He pushed the old man’s scattered wares together with his big boot and said, “Here take yer junk and beat it before I lock yer up.”

The little old man was quick to act; he had supposed that his precious stock was lost forever. It was pitiful to see him on his knees gathering up his broken handiwork which had been so ruthlessly and needlessly damaged. But Pee-Wee helped him while the massive blue-coat stood by to drive the old man along as soon as he had recovered his belongings. For this selling things “on the public thoroughfares” is a heinous offense.

But here, again, the cop was to be baffled for Pee-Wee escorted the frightened old man into the lobby of the theater saying, “This is private property so you don’t need to be a-scared, anyway I know the owner of this theater because the Scouts gave a show here, so you don’t have to be scared any more.”

“I ain’t got enough money to pay a fine,” the frightened old man protested, still with a weather eye on his official persecutor.

There is no place so conspicuously empty as a theater lobby when the crowd has gone and soon Pee-Wee and his old friend were quite alone in the dim, garish corridor, the ticket window closed and its curtain drawn. The cop had sauntered away after completely destroying the old man’s one hope of earning enough to buy his supper. The people had gone home to their own suppers.

“Gee whiz, I guess you know all about ships, hey?” Pee-Wee asked. “And I bet you went to sea too, and I bet you were in Holland too, because you know all about windmills. Gee, you make ’em dandy. I bet you don’t live in Bridgeboro, do you?”

“I live on a barge down ter the river,” the old man said. “I just come up when the show was out ter get the crowd. Guess I’m done in this town; I ain’t done so very good. If I sells one, it’s enough; then I got money fer supper. These little ones is only fifty cents; the big ones is a dollar.”

“How much is the ship?” Pee-Wee asked.

“She’s five dollars,” said the old man, “but I ain’t never expectin’ to sell her. It jus kinder draws attention. I can fix it, ’taint hurt much. I’ll go down on the tide to-morrow and try Southtown. Do you know if they got police in Southtown or jus’ constables?”

“You live on a barge?” Pee-Wee ejaculated, for this bit of information took precedence of every other thought. His good turn seemed likely to open the way into an enchanted realm. “A real barge? Can I go and see it?”

“It’s a old barge I was captain of once; captain of and doin’ business with,” said the old man. “If you want to come down along the river you can see it; you can come on it. But yer mammy and yer daddy—I don’t want ter get in no more trouble.”

“Didn’t I even get you out of trouble?” Pee-Wee demanded. “Come on, I’ll help you carry your stuff and I’ll go down with you. I been on lots of boats, motor-boats and everything.”

“Yer a smart youngster,” said the old man; “yer as bright as a coat of varnish, and ain’t scared o’ nuthin’ or nobody, I cud see that. Thinks I, he’ll make trouble—that’s what I says ter myself when I heerd yer speak up, and the worse fer me, that’s what I says, but yer come out all right.”

“I had lots of authorities I did,” Pee-Wee said, “because Scouts are kind of civic—civil. But I don’t mean they’re civilized. Gee whiz, nobody can say that about me. I can live on herbs, even, I can if I’m hungry. And I’m hungry a lot too.”

“I had lots of authorities I did,” Pee-Wee said, “because Scouts are kind of civic—civil.”

“Guess me and you is like each other that a’way,” said the old man. But Pee-Wee was too engrossed to catch the wistful purport of this remark.

The neighborhood of the river was familiar territory to Pee-Wee, and it was true that he had sailed its placid bosom on many a craft: motor-boat, rowboat, canoe, and raft. But never before had his adventurous foot trod on the deck of a barge.

This particular barge was the Colbert C. Rossey of New York, that being the very name of Pee-Wee’s new acquaintance, who was its owner and captain. The barge was tied alongshore and it seemed as long as a couple of railroad cars. It was unpainted and grimy; its patched sides were as rough as bark and as black as soot. Its long interior was a gaping cavern with capacity for tons and tons of coal or any other kind of bulky merchandise. One could walk along the edge and look down into it as from the brow of a precipice.

But astern all was ship-shape and cosy. On a little area of deck stood the humble domicile of Pop Rossey, a tiny shanty with a stove-pipe sticking out of it, and even with curtains in its little windows. Against the outside of this was a bench on which one might drowse away a summer afternoon while being piloted here and there by some noisy and energetic little tug.

“Gee whiz, it’s dandy,” said Pee-Wee as he looked inside the little house.

Scarcely had he said the words when there arose from a seat in the corner a boy of about his own age, who had been painting windmills, of which there seemed to be a vast store in a large basket close beside him. The floor was covered with shavings, and the little table with odd parts of the quaint ornaments.

It might have been the home of Santa Claus.

Pee-Wee felt that he had entered an enchanted realm. If he had landed plunk on the magic carpet in the Arabian Nights he could hardly have been more astonished. Here was a tiny combination home and workshop. There were three bunks for sleeping, a couple of rickety chairs, a locker for provisions, and another small round table, for meals presumably, but covered now with freshly painted windmills. On a bench stood a row of miniature rowboats, each with a pair of tiny oars stuck under its seat, masterpieces of jack-knife art. There were several little lighthouses standing on counterfeit rocks painted granite color. And all these things had been whittled out, and painted in a variety of gaudy hues.

The old man sank down on an empty grocery box where, somehow, he seemed a more pathetic figure than if he had used a chair.

“Reckon ’taint no use, Sammy,” said he. “I got run off the street same as up in Northvale. Maybe if I had went to the station for a license——”

“They cost money, those,” said the boy.

“’Taint no use anyway,” said the old man resignedly. “If ’twasn’t for this little feller I wouldn’t have my stuff even. I come nigh on stumblin’ over when he shoved me, Sammy. Right in the shoulder he grabbed me, where I got the rheumatism so bad. That’s what I took notice of—they all push you in that place; do you know that, Sammy? Maybe they tell ’em to do like that, huh? Right in the shoulder it is, always. I almost stumbled over and like to broke my neck. Have we got some o’ them beans left, Sammy? You put on some coffee, like a good boy. My, but they’re strong, them cops,” he added, turning to Pee-Wee. “You know onct I was strong and big like that; would you think it? Once I was first mate on a schooner, wasn’t I, Sammy? Sammy’s father could tell you if he was alive. He’s my grandson, Sammy is; ain’t you, Sammy?”

It went even to Pee-Wee’s anything but tender heart to see this poor old man, sitting on the grocery box holding his shoulder with one hand and commenting upon his late adventure without malice, or even resentment. With age one loses the fine spirit of retaliation. The old man seemed to feel the cruel twinge on his shoulder rather than the indignity he had suffered.

“Them’s fine big strapping men, them po-licemen,” he said. “You put on the coffee, Sammy, like a good boy. And see have we got enough beans left. There’s a loaf of bread there, too, Sammy. You didn’t see nothin’ more of the man that followed me down here yesterday—was it yesterday?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Sammy. “I been painting ’em all day. I ran out of the red. I caught some little fish and I’m going to cook ’em.”

“They’ll come handy,” said the old man. “I don’t know whatever we’d do without fishes. Fishes is for folks in trouble. Onct I was wrecked—that was the Nancy, out of Gloucester—and we was on a desert island five weeks. We’d of starved only for the fishes. That was a whaling cruise; Sammy knows all about it. Not one of them things did I sell to-day. I was reckonin’ on bringin’ some meat if I got a single fifty cents. If I had gone down when I was shoved like that I’d never got up again, not with my kinky leg. Onct I could shin up into rigging like a monkey. Well, what is just is, I says. We ain’t having no luck with them, Sammy.”

Then spoke Pee-Wee Harris, Scout. “Gee whiz, now I’m glad you got chased away like that, because now I know you and a lot of times I’ve been hungry and I know just what to do and I’m going up to get some eats and I’m coming back. And besides I got a dandy idea how you can sell these things and make money and nobody can stop you because its on private property, I can prove it. There’s going to be a dandy big kind of a racket in East Village—that’s across the river down below—and they’re going to have all kinds of things to sell, ice-cream cones and everything—it’s going to be a big lawn party for the new Community House. They’re going to have bazaar and chicken salad and paper-weights and cakes and postcards, and I know because my sister is making a lot of things for it, fancy towels and everything, and they’re going to have homemade candy and everything. So we’ll go over there and sell things, hey? It starts on Thursday and it’s going to be three days. Gee, I bet you can make as much as a hundred dollars. Anyway, now I’m going to get some eats, and I’m going to have supper here with you, too.”

The old man and his grandson were too dumbfounded to protest in the face of Pee-Wee’s enterprise and generosity. All of Pee-Wee’s propositions were made with whirlwind vehemence. Sammy accompanied him to the beautiful Harris house on Terrace Avenue and listened appalled while our hero shouted upstairs to his mother proclaiming an assault on the kitchen and ice-box in the interest of a Scout good turn. He laid under contribution two cans of spaghetti, several boxes of crackers and a grapefruit, and would have taken a strip of bacon had not the cook interfered.

An assault on the ice-box in the interest of a Scout good turn

“Now we’re going to have a peach of a supper,” he said, “and we’ll fix it all up how we’ll sell your things over in East Village, because all I have to do is speak to them and especially I know how to handle girls, especially grown-up ones. So a lot you should worry about cops and things like that—gee whiz, I bet we’ll make a hundred dollars.”

Sammy was a quiet boy, and he contemplated this diminutive promoter with consternation amounting almost to awe. He felt that with such a resourceful patron things would take a turn for the better. Pee-Wee’s single-handed triumph over the cop seemed little less than a miracle. And in his own home, Sammy did not fail to note, this redoubtable little Scout was certainly something of an autocrat.

On the way back he told Pee-Wee something of his grandfather’s despairing efforts to keep himself out of the poor house, “and me out of the orphan asylum,” he added wistfully.

“How did you happen to come up to Bridgeboro? Gee, it’s lucky you did, because now I’m going to fix everything for you and you’ll make a lot of money.”

From Sammy Pee-Wee learned that the old barge had, until lately, been in pretty constant requisition as a freight carrier in New York Harbor and up and down the Hudson. But for some reason or other (probably its age and condition), it had ceased to be in demand. It had been the last refuge of the old man who had spent all his life on the waters, and must have furnished a prosy enough form of nautical life to one who had known adventures on a New Bedford whaler. But even on the water poor old Pop Rossey had run foul of the law.

“The inspectors they wouldn’t give us a license this year,” said Sammy; “not till we put two new planks in the hull. And we couldn’t do that unless we put her in dry dock. That’s how we happened to come up here, because the inspectors wouldn’t bother us up here. Captain Stark—he owns a tugboat—and he towed us up here because we thought we could sell some things in these towns. My grandfather does dandy whittling; he used to make these things when he was a sailor. But they won’t let us sell them, so we got hard luck.”

“You leave it to me,” said Pee-Wee, “because I’m lucky. It’s mighty good you came up here because now you’re going to get a lot of money. But anyway how are you going to get back again? Is that tugboat coming after you?”

“We don’t care anything about going back,” Sammy said. “We were thinking if we could sell some of our things, we could just live on the barge and nobody would bother us, and we could work in the towns all around here. I don’t care so much, but would they let my grandfather come and see me at the Orphan’s Home? Do you think these ladies will let us sell things at their show?”

“Sure they will because I’m a Scout and they’ll listen to me. And no cop’s got a right to go in there either. You leave it to me, and I’m going to stick to you, too. Didn’t I tell you I’d get some things to eat, and didn’t I do it? If I can handle my own mother, can’t I handle a lot of girls? If I know how to handle cops!”

It did seem to poor old Pop Rossey that he and his grandson had found, indeed, not only a promoter but a protector and provider. They ate a sumptuous repast in the little house on the barge, during which Pee-Wee was able to make good all his claims in regards to his appetite. He lingered with them until dusk and reluctantly went away filled with plans and spaghetti.

“That might be a good thing, Sammy,” commented the old man. “At carnivals and things like that people buys things. Maybe that would be good, to stick to carnivals and fairs and things like that; hey, Sammy? These here Scouts, they’re wide-awake youngsters, hey? Maybe ye’d like to be one of them, Sammy?”

“You’ve got to get a concession to sell at places like that,” said Sammy. “You’ve got to pay something down at the start.”

“At ladies’ fairs and ructions like these?”

“Maybe not, I don’t know,” said Sammy.

“It’ll be good if he can fix it, Sammy; maybe we might get a start. He’s a clever youngster, I’m thinking. I hope them inspectors never gets up this far. It’s all the home we got Sammy, this old scow. It’s all that stands between me and the poor house now. Would you think it, me that was first mate in the Nancy whaler? You should have heard me shouting out orders in them days. In the Sandwich Islands and Australia they would never stop us selling things in the market places. Many’s the whale’s tooth I carved and sold for a good price. Well, them was brave old days. And here we are marooned. He’s a fine youngster, that. My but he’s the kind would of started a mutiny back in the sailing days.”

Whether Pee-Wee would have started a mutiny or not, he unquestionably would have started something. Indeed he started something that very night. Luck usually favored him, and he was required to go over to East Village to accompany his sister home, since his father was using one car and Mrs. Harris had gone in the other to a neighboring city.

He trudged down Main Street and turned into River Place where the old bridge spanned the stream across to the ambitious village which was soon to be the scene of local festivity. East Village had no main thoroughfare and very few stores; it depended largely on its neighbor, Bridgeboro. But what it lacked in stores it made up in pride and local spirit. There was a real-estate development over there, and the idea of a community club had lately taken possession of this quiet residential place.

About the first thing to be seen when one crossed the river was the Community Club house, a sprawling, picturesque log cabin in which was a hall for entertainments, a room for dancing, a club-room and a bowling alley. East Village was all dressed up and no place to go. So the completion of the Community Club was to be gaily and profitably celebrated.

In the club-room were assembled the young ladies who were the presiding geniuses of the forthcoming bazaar. They were deeply engrossed in the manufacture of fancy articles. In a group by themselves were gathered the Girl Scouts of East Village busily engaged in making birch-bark picture frames and napkin rings. From the adjacent kitchen there emanated the delicious odor of candy in the process of manufacture.

Upon this public-spirited and industrious gathering descended the Scout of Scouts like a thunderstorm, drowning his sister’s welcome, utterly ignoring her, and addressing the group.

Upon this industrious gathering descended the Scout of Scouts like a thunderstorm, addressing the group

“I got a dandy idea,” he said, “how you can do a good turn and even may make some money for your bazaar, because I know an old man that makes fancy windmills to sell and little lighthouses and everything—boats too—he whittles them. They’re fifty cents each and they’re peachy, and I bet you never saw anything like them. Gee whiz, they’re better than things you sew! And I told him we’re going to have him come over here and sell them—gee, wait till you see them!”

“Can’t you say good evening, Walter?” his sister reproved.

“Good evening and they paint them all up red and green and everything——”

“Oh, goodness me,” chirped one of the Girl Scouts, “I saw that old man over in Bridgeboro the other day and he’s nothing but a peddler. He’s a perfectly dreadful old man—I saw him. You’ll be wanting to send an old-clothes man next. I never heard of such a thing!”

“Oh, I think he’s just adorable,” said another girl, alluding, not to the old man, but to Pee-Wee. “Go on, tell us about him.”

“So I’m going to bring him over the day it starts,” said Pee-Wee, “so then the cops can’t interfere with him, and I’m going to fix up a booth for him in the bazaar, and I’ll like to see any one chase him away then because it’s private property—those cops make me tired they’re so fresh and——”

“Listen, Walter,” said his sister, “you know we have something to say, too.”

“Oh, let him talk, I just love to listen to him,” laughed another of the Girl Scouts.

This was not the way to silence the organizer of the late Chipmunk Patrol. “That shows how much you don’t know about Scouting and doing good turns and all things like that while you make believe you’re Scouts (he addressed them all, for they were all laughing) just because you make things out of birch-bark but anyway you’re scared of snakes, even spiders, that’s how much Scouts girls are!”

“Oh, isn’t he just too excruciating!” still another Girl Scout carolled forth. “Don’t you just love him?” she softly inquired of her nearest neighbor.

But the sharp car of the Scout overheard her and she was lost. “That’s all you know about love and crazy things like that,” he thundered. “When somebody comes along doing a good turn like Scouts got to do, all you can do is laugh and giggle—geeeee whiz!”

“That’s all you know about love and crazy things like that.”

He directed his thunder at the Girl Scouts, and having thus stifled them into a kind of undertone of sly giggling he addressed Miss Dorlin, the head of the bazaar committee, who was “grown up” and presumably capable of understanding his benevolent undertaking.

“So is it all right for me to bring him over here when the bazaar starts?” he asked. “Because I want to help him to do a lot of business because he’s poor and maybe he has to go to the poor house, maybe; and his grandson, maybe he has to go to an orphan asylum, and gee whiz, that’s no fun, even you get starved there with one helping because I know a feller that used to be an orphan.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s very nice and kind of you,” said Miss Dorlin putting her arm about the sturdy little Scout, “but you see this isn’t exactly the kind of an affair where they have concessions as they do in carnivals. We’re just making a few things to sell, it’s just like a big family in a way, and, of course, we can’t have people from outside coming here and selling things—peddlers. I don’t mean anything against your old friend,” she hastened to add, “but you see it wouldn’t do. Of course we don’t want the Community Club Bazaar to be like a circus or a county fair.” She patted the hero gently on his curly head by way of sugar-coating her refusal and he paused, baffled. “People give lots of money to orphan asylums, and sometimes that’s the best way to help people, isn’t it?”

“And if we wanted a circus,” chirped a Girl Scout, “all we’d have to do is to have Walter come. He’s a whole circus in himself.”

“Listen, girls,” said Miss Dorlin with her most smilingly patronizing air, “Walter Harris is a true-blue Scout, and we mustn’t laugh at him. He does want to do good turns and I think it’s perfectly splendid. I think it’s fine for him to feel as he does. Now he understands how it is—about the bazaar. And I’m sure that some day he’ll do something real big. I just know that he’ll surprise us all.”

She was right about that.

“And can’t I bring him over then?” said Pee-Wee.

“Oh, goodness gracious, no,” said a girl who had not spoken before. “A dirty old peddler! Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“Don’t you dare to bring him,” said another. “Don’t you let him,” she added to Elsie, who was preparing to go.

“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Dorlin, addressing Pee-Wee. “But you must come over yourself and buy lots and lots of ice-cream, and that will be doing a good turn to our poor little village and our wonderful new club house.” She was exasperatingly patronizing. “You know we’re depending on Bridgeboro and all you boys with such great big appetites, so you must be sure to come. That will be helping and doing a good turn, and I think good turns are just wonderful and beautiful. And I think you’re just a perfectly splendid little Scout.” She patted him on the shoulder and what could be nicer?

He accompanied his sister home with a frowning countenance. As for Elsie, she thought that Pee-Wee’s proposition to install Pop Rossey and his wares at the bazaar too ridiculous to talk about. But she had not been embarrassed by his outburst for people always found him amusing. She contented herself with saying, “Don’t you dare to do such a thing. And you’d better keep away from peddlers.”

Yet, after all, it must be said of Pee-Wee, that if he seemed highly amusing it was because his schemes were so big and he was so small. He never, indeed, performed some trifling service and called it a good turn. He never attempted anything little or paltry. He was out to save old Pop Rossey and his grandson from being separated in public institutions. It was a pretty big mouthful, and he would probably not be able to masticate it. But there was nothing small about Pee-Wee. He was bigger than the Community Bazaar, much bigger.

On reaching home he and his sister entered the attractive library where Dr. and Mrs. Harris sat reading. The hero wore his most portentous frown, and it was evident that all had not gone well with him.

“Well, how goes the hick bazaar?” the doctor playfully inquired. For East Village was somewhat of a joke in the flourishing Bridgeboro.

“It’s going to be perfectly wonderful,” said Elsie, “and we’re hoping every one here in Bridgeboro will go. We’re hoping to clear three thousand dollars.”

“East Village will never come across with that figure,” her father commented. “I don’t see why they built a Community House at all; they haven’t enough people over there. I told your cousin Alice that the other day.”

Still wearing his darkest frown Pee-Wee betook himself upstairs to his private sanctum and settled down to bethink him what he would say to old Pop Rossey on the morrow. For he had unqualifiedly adopted the barge as his new headquarters and the hapless pair who occupied it as his special charges.

Meanwhile his heedless sister was beguiling her parents with an account of his precipitate assault on the bazaar committee.

“I nearly died laughing,” she said. “Guess what he wants to do! He wants to bring an old peddler to the bazaar and set him to selling things; he calls it a good turn. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Poor Emily Dorlin could hardly keep a straight face, but she was terribly nice to him. Can you imagine? I wish you could have seen the Girl Scouts—they had him going full force. I don’t know where in the world he ever picks up such people, he was simply a scream.”

“And you turned him down?” queried the doctor amusedly.

“How can you ask such a question! Of course we did. I don’t know if the man is an Italian or not—why he’s just a street peddler the police chased away from somewhere. I think he lives in a hovel.”

“He lives on a barge,” said Mrs. Harris in her gentle way. “Walter took them some food.”

“Well, I think you’d better look out who he gets in with,” said the girl emphatically. “It’s all very funny, but I should think you’d want to know who he makes companions of.”

“Oh, we can’t attempt to keep up with Walter in his mad career of benevolence,” laughed the doctor.

“I really don’t see any harm in his taking food to the unfortunate pair,” said Mrs. Harris. “There really isn’t anything vicious about them.”

“Elsie,” said her father, laying down his newspaper, “do you remember the boy who promised to join the Scouts if Walter could show him a real live wild animal? And that very night a man with a bear came to town? Beware of Walter, Elsie. The gods are on his side.”

“Well, I don’t suppose they object to him, they’re so used to listening to thunder,” said the girl. “Really, sometimes I think his voice grows louder and louder. And the way he eats!”

“Well,” laughed the doctor. “You have your community bazaar over there in the wilds, and Walter has his old salts to foregather with. Mother and I seem to be the only sober and quiet members of the family. We’ll have to take a run over to the bazaar, eh, Mother?”

“I suppose that little boy on the barge is just filthy,” said Elsie.

“I understand he’s hungry,” said her father, “and that’s what counts.”

“I really don’t see any harm in his taking food to them,” said Mrs. Harris. “Probably they’ll be gone in a day or two and then he’ll be interested in something else.”

“You never seem to be concerned about him,” Elsie complained. “He just does whatever he pleases, and comes and goes.”

“And triumphs,” said the doctor. “He has a lot of resources, as he says, so why should we worry?”

“He wants a homemade pie for to-morrow,” said the gentle Mrs. Harris. “I do hope he won’t catch malaria down there.”

“Nothing can catch him,” said the doctor. “He goes Scout Pace, whatever that is.”