Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris: As Good As His Word - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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“Three!”

Simultaneously the banana peel sailed down into the face of little Googy and the Bridgeboro Evening Bugle sailed up and smote Scout Harris plunk on the nose. He caught it before it slid two feet down the roof and, unrolling it and straightening it out, scanned the big headline on the front page:

SCOUTS TO CLEAN UP TOWN

Without pausing for further perusal he summoned Googy to the roof.

“Look what it’s got! Look what it’s got!” he said. “Come on up, it’s all about scouts!”

Googy, whose humble calling it was to distribute the Bugle, never read it. Like the shoemaker’s children who are said to go barefoot, he dealt in news but had none. He had no more papers to deliver, the Harris copy was the last one, and he longed to ascend to the exalted throne where the scout sat entirely concealed by the opened news sheet.

“Didn’t I tell you I didn’t know what was in it?” Pee-wee demanded. “That shows I’m always right. If I say I don’t know a thing, I know it. Here’s a lot about a clean-up drive, all about cleaning up the streets and everything and I’m going to be in it and they’re going to have a banquet for the workers and—and—now, you see, here’s something about the fellers in the Martha Caldwell Home too. Come on up! It says how they’re going to play the Ridgedale baseball team, and I bet they get licked too, because the Ridgedale fellers can lick the scouts and the scouts can lick the Martha Caldwell Home fellers, so that proves it.”

“They can’t lick ’em, neither,” said Googy.

“They can too, I can prove it,” said Pee-wee, “because you fellers can’t play at all. Come on up; there’s a lot of things. There’s a new law about dogs and everything and they can’t get the school fixed in time to open in September because the workmen are on a strike, and I’m on their side and there’s a big clean-up drive, and I’m going to join and stop people from throwing banana peels and things around.”

“Wot?” gasped Googy.

“You can throw them at people,” said Pee-wee; “that’s different. Come on up; there’s a list of the fellers that are going to play on your team; it’s all printed here.”

Now in the heart of little Googy there was a secret. Among the names of the boys who were to play on the Martha Caldwell Home team was the name of Halstead Tanner. That was not a bad-sounding name and no one could have told you why the owner of that name was known simply as Googy. But such was the case.

The Martha Caldwell Home was an institution for orphans and homeless boys. It had been founded and endowed by a benevolent lady of Bridgeboro who had long since gone to her reward. The boys who lived in the home were not Bridgeboro boys; they came from distant parts, and because they were kept together after the fashion of an institution, they were not a part of the boy life of Bridgeboro. They marched to school in a body and back home in a body and they were known as the Martha Caldwell boys. They played on their own grounds and wore the dull gray suits of the institution.

How little Halstead Tanner had been given the job of delivering the evening paper about town, no one knew and no one cared. He seemed to have attained to one point higher in the social scale than his comrades, for his individuality was recognized by a name. They did not call him “one of the Home boys,” they called him Googy. It was not much of a name, but it was better than no name at all.

But all the same Googy knew he had a real name. And he knew more than that; he knew that, because he was a very little devil at his dextrous art and could throw papers around corners and through windows, he had been chosen to pitch (think of that!) in the forthcoming game that the Home boys were to play with the Ridgedale team.

He had trembled when he heard the great news and now, when Scout Harris called down that the names of those boys were actually printed in the paper, this little demon of a sharpshooter fairly shook with fear. He was afraid to let Scout Harris know that he, Googy the paper boy, was none other than Halstead Tanner who was going to stand in the box and baffle Ridgedale with his uncanny twists and curves. Because if Scout Harris knew that, he would guy him and make fun of him.

But just the same Googy longed to clamber up on that roof and behold his own name, his real name, in print. Could he do that without giving himself away?

“Come on up, there are a lot of things printed here,” encouraged Pee-wee.