Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Motor Caravan - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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Anyway Pee-wee Harris is, that’s one sure thing. His mother calls him Walter and my sisters call him Walter, but Pee-wee is his regular name. He’s our young hero and some of the fellows call him Peerless Pee-wee, and some of them call him Speck.

If all of us fellows were automobiles, Pee-wee would be a Ford. That’s because he’s the smallest and he makes the most noise. He eats all his food running on high. He never has to shift his gears to eat dessert. Even if it’s a tough steak he takes it on high. He’s a human cave. He’s about three feet six inches in diameter and his tongue is about six feet three inches long. He has beautiful brown curly hair and he’s just too cute—that’s what everybody says. His nose has got three freckles on it. He starts on compression. When he gets excited Webster’s Dictionary turns green with envy.

Now the way it was fixed was that we were all to meet at the Bridgeboro Station at three o’clock the next day so as to get the three-eighteen train for New York. Then we were going to go on the Lake Shore Limited to Klucksville—that’s near St. Louis.

When Pee-wee showed up at the station he looked like the leader of a brass band. His scout suit was all pressed, his compass was dangling around his neck, in case the Lake Shore Limited should lose its way, I suppose, and his scout knife was hanging to his belt. He had his belt-ax on too. I guess that was so he could chop his way through the forests if the train got stalled. He had his camera and his air rifle and his swamp boots and his scout whistle, and he had his duffel bag on the end of his scout staff. And, oh, boy, he had a new watch.

I said, “Good night, you must have been robbing the church steeple. Where did you get that young clock? If it only had an electric bulb in it we could use it for a headlight. Is it supposed to keep time?”

“It ought to be able to keep a whole lot of time, it’s big enough,” Harry said. “Are you going to take it with you or send it by express?”

I said, “Oh, sure, a big watch like that can keep a lot of time; it holds about a quart.”

“You make me tired!” Pee-wee shouted. “It’s warranted for a year.”

“I bet it takes a year to wind it up,” Westy said.

“Anyway we can drink out of it if we get thirsty,” Will Dawson told him. “It’s got a nice spring in it.”

“It doesn’t vary a second,” Pee-wee shouted. “Look at the clock in the station; that’s Western Union time.”

Gee whiz, but that kid was proud of his new watch. He looked at it about every ten seconds while we were waiting for the train, and every once in a while he looked up at the sun. I guess maybe he thought the sun was a little late, hey? When we got to the city he checked up all the clocks he saw on the way over to the Grand Central Station, to see if they were right, and when we were whizzing up along the Hudson on the Lake Shore Limited he kept a time table in one hand and his watch in the other so as to find out if we reached Poughkeepsie and Albany on time.

Just before we all turned in for the night, Harry and Brent Gaylong went over and sat by him and began jollying him about the watch. The rest of us sprawled around on the Pullman seats, listening and laughing. Gee whiz, when Harry and Brent Gaylong get together, good night!

Harry said, “The trouble with those heavy duty watches is they’re not intended for night work. They work all right in the daytime, but you see at night when they haven’t got the sun to go by, they get to sprinting——”

“Do you know what kind of a watch this is?” Pee-wee shouted at him. “It’s a scout watch——”

Brent said in that sober way of his, “That’s just the trouble. Those scout watches go scout-pace. A scout is always ahead of time; so is a scout watch. If a scout watch is supposed to arrive at three o’clock, it arrives at two—an hour beforehand. A scout is prompt.”

“Positively,” Harry said; “by to-morrow morning that watch will be an hour ahead of time. It’ll beat every other watch by an hour.”

“I bet it’s right on the minute to-morrow morning,” Pee-wee shouted. “That’s a scout watch; it’s advertised in Boys’ Life. The ad. said it keeps perfect time.”

“How long have you had it?” Rossie Bent wanted to know.

“My father gave it to me for a present on account of this trip,” the kid said; “he gave it to me just before I started off.”

“So you haven’t had it overnight yet?” Brent asked him. “You don’t know whether it’s good at night work or not.”

“They always race in the dark,” Harry said; “that’s the trouble with those boy scout watches.”

By this time the colored porter and about half a dozen passengers were standing around listening and laughing.

Harry said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Kid. I happen to know something about those watches and they’re not to be trusted. The boy scout watch is a pile of junk. If that watch isn’t at least an hour ahead of time when we sit down to breakfast to-morrow morning, I’ll buy you the biggest pie they’ve got in the city of Cleveland. If your watch is wrong by as much as an hour you’ll have to do a good turn between every two stations we stop at till we get to Chicago. What do you say?”

“I won’t have to worry about any good turns,” Pee-wee shot back at him.

Harry said, “All right, is it a go?”

“Sure it’s a go,” the kid shouted. “Mm! Mm! I’ll be eating pie all day to-morrow.”