Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris, Mayor for a Day - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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Pee-wee had always been an aggressive hero; among his comrades, Roy Blakeley and the others, he had always been able to hold his own against concerted attacks of jollying. But when he walked into the poor little musty front room of the Liventi home, he stepped with reverence and awe. He felt that in a way he was on the stage.

This feeling was increased by the presence of a sumptuous marimba^[1], a thing so magnificent in shining nickel and superfluous metal ornamentation that it seemed quite out of place in its humble environment. Signor had discarded the ornate instrument (in deference to a capricious public) in favor of strings of bells also gorgeously mounted, by shaking which he extracted operatic and popular gems; he preferred the operatic.

The Liventi boys kept their end of the bargain to the letter. Pee-wee experienced a slight shock as the parents of the boys entered the room, Signor in his shirt sleeves and collarless but with mustache twisted to deadly points and with arms gesticulating a welcome.

“You are da scouta boy, huh?” he said. “Scouta boy, dat’s a all righta.”

Signora was evidently weary from travel, for she did no more than show herself, then withdrew; but Signor was a glorious host, bowing and smiling as if he were receiving the whole personnel of the Boy Scouts of America. Pee-wee was overwhelmed. If he had expected Signor to appear in tinseled knickerbockers, he at least was not disappointed at his welcome. He could hardly reconcile the unbuttoned, collarless shirt with the motley splendor of vaudeville as he knew it, but Signor was very friendly and ingratiating and that was better than all. He did not seem to stand aloof in awful majesty from the residents of Terrace Avenue. Tasca and Bruno seemed to say, “Now we have kept our word; what next?”

Pee-wee hardly knew what to say in this negligee but still romantic presence, so he said, “I get up shows sometimes; I’m going to get up a dandy one to act up in Little Valley. Maybe Tasca and Bruno could be in it, hey?”

For answer Signor pressed his heart feelingly with one hand and grasped Pee-wee’s with the other. Pee-wee had never dreamed that “refined vaudeville” would take him to its bosom quite so readily.

“You are da fina scouta boy, huh!” said Signor Liventi, brimming with cordial enthusiasm. “Tasca, Bruno, dey joiner da scout—you make ’em da scout. Aaah, dey play er da fine musick! Dey go er da hike—woods—all—fina. Shu, young mister! Dey be a da good scout. Hey, Tasca, Bruno; what you say?”

Roving player and foreigner though he was, Signor knew what was in the air about scouting and he wanted those two boys of his to be scouts. It seemed as if he had waited for this opportunity. He was certainly appealing to the right authority. Pee-wee was not only the smallest, he was also the greatest of boy scouts. He was the greatest scout-maker known to the organization. He sat with befitting respect and listened to the dark-skinned brothers play selections with dextrous variations from Carmen while the gorgeous silvered frame of the resounding marimba vibrated under their vigorous and lightning blows. Never again would Scout Harris permit the rabble outside the school to ridicule the Liventi boys and call them “wops.”

The masterly performance of Bruno and Tasca inspired Pee-wee with the spirit of big enterprise and abandoning the role of enraptured beholder he launched forth upon an outline of his latest cherished dream.

“Suuure, I’ll get ’em into the scouts,” he ejaculated with comforting assurance, “and they’ll even go up to Temple Camp with us and everything—gee whiz, don’t you worry.”

Signor Liventi was so far from worrying that he clapped his left hand over his heart and gracefully extended the other; he certainly had the grand manner, and it even obliterated his collarless shirt. “Winna da badge—shu!” he said glancing proudly at his sons. “Maka da fine trail, hey? Shu.”

“Sure they’ll go trailing and everything,” Pee-wee said. “But that’ll be in the summer after school closes and anyway before that I have a dandy idea. Scouts, they’ve got lots of resources and I thought of a dandy way for Tasca and Bruno to win a badge even before they win it kind of, as you might say.”

The father and sons were all attention, anxious to know how a badge could be won before it was won.

“You see you can’t get a merit badge till you’re a first-class scout,” our hero explained. “I’m one of those,” he added. “You got to go through two stages first—tenderfoot and second class.” Tasca and Bruno seemed enraptured at these details of scouting.

“But anyway,” Pee-wee said, “do you know what a teckinality is?”

Signor raised his eyes dubiously as if to make the humiliating confession that he did not know.

“It’s when you think of a way to do a thing that’s against the regular way and that’s kind of just the same not against the rule,” Pee-wee said.

“Ah!” said Signor, apparently satisfied.

“So I’m going to have Bruno and Tasca win the music badge,” said Pee-wee. “They got a right not to have it till they’re first-class scouts, but anyway, they can kind of win it and save it up, can’t they? Then when they get to be first-class scouts up at camp this summer all they’ll have to do is ask for the badges and they’ll get them, see? Do you want to know how I’m going to do it? I’m going to do it by having them be in a big show.”

Signor stood speechless at Pee-wee’s resource and enterprise. The poor, little, dumpy man whom our hero had wished to gaze upon seemed ready to throw himself at the very feet of this diminutive embodiment of scouting. As for the brothers they felt that they were already drawn into the magic circle by a master hand. They could trust to Pee-wee, and all the joys of boy scouting would be theirs.

“Dey maka da musick for da scouta boy,” said Signor with enthusiastic concurrence in Pee-wee’s plans.

[1] A marimba is an instrument consisting of a graduated row of wooden bars laid side by side from which music is made by strokes of a hammer.