Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris on the Briny Deep - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4
CHAPTER II
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
ОглавлениеOf course Stubby Piper had no intention of joining the Chipmunks. He had no desire to tie up with a patrol which was the laughing stock of the whole troop. He was amused by Pee-wee; he liked the small boys who were the subjects of Pee-wee’s despotic rule. Stubby appreciated a joke, but he had no desire to be a part of a joke. There was just about as much chance of his joining the Chipmunks as there was of Pee-wee showing him a bear. He liked to jolly Pee-wee.
The dream of Stubby’s life was to be a member of Roy Blakeley’s patrol, the Silver Foxes. He was captivated by Roy; it was good to see him laugh at the nonsense and antics of that hilarious organization. To go off with Roy on one of his absurd and aimless hikes was Stubby’s fondest hope. But there were no vacancies in Roy’s patrol, and the best that Stubby could do was to affiliate himself with them as an outsider. He was always to be seen with them, as a sort of honorary member, enjoying their company and participating, as far as a non-member could, in their hilarious activities. “Don’t get discouraged,” Roy had told him. “Maybe one of us will be sent to the insane asylum and then you can join. It may happen immediately if not sooner. Maybe one of us will die; there are scouts dying now who never died before. Meanwhile, keep up your practice on Pee-wee. To be a Silver-plated Fox you have to take a course in jollying Pee-wee.”
It was not to be wondered at that Pee-wee wanted Stubby in his patrol. There was a vacancy in the patrol, and Stubby would be a “catch.” Willis Harlen, the chippiest of the Chipmunks, had gone away to visit his aunt, and it was the autocratic custom of Pee-wee never to hold open a vacancy in his harum-scarum organization. If a member had a cold or went away for the holidays, that was the end of him; his place was filled. Sometimes, even, Pee-wee trod on the good scout laws and had nine or ten boys in his patrol, a situation which had frequently to be adjusted by his scoutmaster. Like Napoleon, Pee-wee did not obey laws, he made them—or invented them, as he would have said.
As a producer, Pee-wee had no equal in the world of scouting. His shows and scout exhibitions were the scream of the town. He was the greatest theatrical manager of the block on which he lived, a block containing four houses. And by far the greatest enterprise that Pee-wee had ever undertaken was the Chipmunk Scout Carnival for which Mr. Horatio Baldwin had smilingly given the use of his field. The Chipmunk Carnival was to last one week and was for the purpose of securing funds to defray the cost of Pee-wee’s many and various plans for the summer up at Temple Camp. “You may do anything with the field except take it away with you,” Mr. Baldwin had said. “Tell him he mustn’t eat it,” Roy Blakeley had added. “Once he took a hike to some tableland because he thought there’d be something to eat on it.”
Mr. Baldwin was a wealthy and kind-hearted gentleman who took an interest in the scouts. He liked to see them help themselves. “He ought to see us at dinner up at camp,” said Roy. Baldwin’s field was really a part of the extensive Baldwin estate. The big mansion and its grounds occupied an entire block on Outlook Avenue. The lawn extended several hundred feet along the street and was separated by a tall hedge from the tennis courts which also bordered the street for several hundred feet more. Since the marriage of Grace Baldwin and the strange disappearance of her brother Horace, these courts had never been used for tennis.
For a while the land, as smooth as a floor, and the picturesque pavilion where the players had lolled and waited, and consumed lemonade and kept their equipment, remained a silent memorial of the young life which had made merry there. Then the Woman’s Club held a bazaar on the grounds, the Red Cross gave a lawn party there, and after a time the whilom scene of tournaments came to be regarded as an available and popular spot for semi-public festivities characterized by social atmosphere and refinement. Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin were never averse to the use of the old courts and pavilion for such purposes.
Of course Pee-wee Harris could not see the Ladies’ Aid serving tea in these enchanted precincts without conjuring up soaring ambitions of a scout carnival to be held there. The Red Cross lawn party decided him. He had always a lurking fear of humorous assault when his enterprises were held in public fields and vacant lots. But here was a private place that could be thrown open to the public (for ten cents) and where the managerial authority could be rigidly maintained. The private, almost residential character of the place, would make it easy to eject scoffers and summarily deal with riots.
So Pee-wee went to see Mr. Baldwin who seemed amused and interested in the enterprise, and particularly amused at Pee-wee.
“I think it’s a fine thing,” said Mr. Baldwin, sitting in a big wicker chair on his deep veranda and contemplating the diminutive scout whose legs dangled from the porch coping. “The only thing is that we don’t want to use the old courts except for affairs that are quiet and—sort of town affairs, you understand. As Mrs. Baldwin says, for nice purposes.”
“Even the President of the United States is a member of the Boy Scouts,” said Pee-wee; “so that shows you how nice and quiet we are. Even if we make noises, kind of, they’re sort of nice quiet noises. And if you come to the carnival you won’t have to pay anything, because you own the place, and Mrs. Baldwin can come for nothing too, and you won’t have to pay anything for frankfurters, either—gee whiz, that’s only fair.”
“You’re going to sell frankfurters?”
“Sure, and waffles and toasted marshmallows and lemonade. And we’re going to give demonstrations of how you can light a fire in the rain and how you can tell time by the sun, even without any watch, and we’re going to chase a cat across the grounds and then show how we can track her, and we’re going to give exhibitions of falling out of trees and not getting killed, and we’re going to have first aid demonstrations and how you don’t eat poisonous toadstools instead of mushrooms like a lot of people do, because they’re not scouts, and if you happen to see one of my patrol being carried on a stretcher all soaking wet kind of, you needn’t be scared, because that’s just to show how we do with a feller that was drowning—we pour the water all over him to make him look that way. And we give imitations of the calls of animals too, so if you hear a sound like an elephant you needn’t think it’s really one, because that’s only Billy Jansen making that sound. So can we have the field?”
Mr. Baldwin not only donated the use of the old tennis courts, but he donated ten dollars besides, for decorations and advertising, as he said. For several days thereafter, the field was the scene of frantic preparations, and Pee-wee’s voice, more terrible than that of any animal, arose in despotic command. If the Baldwins were not terrified by Pee-wee’s voice, they were not likely to be shocked at the roarings of the jungle against which he had warned them.
School closed for the season on Friday, Saturday was given over to elaborate preparations, and on Monday, the passersby along Outlook Avenue beheld a sign above the opening in the hedge which read:
GRAND CARNIVAL
of the
CHIPMUNK SCOUT PATROL
10 CENTS
SEE THE SCOUTS IN THEIR NATIVE LIFE
Within, the visitor beheld a festive scene. On his knees before a romantic fire was Eddie Carlo, toasting marshmallows. Eddie had attained to the second class in scouting. Little Wendy Jansen collected the price of admission at the door, while his brother Billy sold birch bark ornaments, made and autographed by Chipmunks. Ben Maxwell, the only large boy in the aggregation, announced and conducted the demonstrations of life saving, first aid, and woodcraft. There was one really fine attraction. The Liventi brothers, Bruno and Tasca, stood behind their gorgeous marimba on the porch of the pavilion, their four hammers plying the keys of the clamorous instrument as their hands sped back and forth with lightning movement. These talented Italian boys were a real discovery of Pee-wee’s and they almost saved the carnival with their stirring melodies. But not quite.