CHAPTER XI—WE FIND A WAY
I said, “Good night, that ends it for us. We can’t keep this up for three hours and a half. There’s no use trying. We’re beaten.”
“Scouts beaten!” one of the girls said.
“Just the same way as Napoleon was beaten,” I said. “You think you’re so smart. Maybe you don’t know he was beaten because his reinforcements didn’t show up.”
“Don’t let’s give up,” Pee-wee shouted, just as he finished his last mouthful of pie.
Minerva Skybrow said, “Isn’t it nice how much you know about history?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s just too cute. But my favorite studies are the multiplication table and the dining table. You’re so smart, maybe you can suggest something. You don’t expect to go on eating for three hours, do you? Even—even—General—even Foch couldn’t do that. And he’s greater than I am, I guess.”
She just said, “Oh, is he, really?”
“And so is Washington,” I said. Because I was good and mad.
“You mean he was,” she said. “He’s dead, you know.”
“If you can get us out of this scrape,” I said, “let’s see you do it.”
She just said, “Well, of course, if you admit that your appetites have failed you, and if you really want the Girl Scouts to tell you what is in your own handbooks, I’ll remind you of the value of mushrooms.”
“Oh, is that so?” I said. “I know all about mushrooms and I can tell a mushroom from a toadstool or a footstool or a piano-stool or any other kind of a stool. But that’s not going to keep this blamed wagon here, is it?”
She said, “Oh, isn’t it?”
“Well,” I said, “you’re so smart, you were always getting E plus in Miss Harrison’s class and you wrote a poem for the High School paper and all that, let’s see you keep this wagon here for three hours. Do you mean to tell me you and the rest of these girl scouts could go on eating for three hours?”
“No, but we could use our brains for three seconds,” she said.
“Maybe you think it’s easy to argue with a wop that doesn’t understand ten words of English. What would you do? You’re so smart. What would you do?”
She said, “Well, of course we’re only girls and we haven’t had the advantages of a Temple Camp, and we can only eat raspberry sundaes and banana splits. But if I were a smart, wonderful boy, head of a scout patrol and had my face on the covers of a lot of books, and knew all about the boy scout handbook, I’d try to make this man understand that that dark spot underneath where his wagon stood is simply filled with mushrooms. I’d try to make him understand that the best mushrooms grow in the dark and damp places. And I’d tell him (because you know scouts know everything) that mushrooms are worth about seventy-five cents a pound. I’d do him a good turn. I’d show him how to dig them all up so as to get the spawn and everything, and I’d show him how to plant them in boxes. Then he’d have two beds of them. Perhaps all that would occupy him for the rest of the afternoon, and of course the wagon——
“But then, I’m only a girl, and I can’t eat my way to power and world dominion.” That’s just the way she talked. Honest.
I said, “Minerva Skybrow, you’ve got Joan of Arc beaten about ’steen dozen ways. I know that about mushrooms in the handbook; it comes right after Woodcraft. When I used to see you in Assembly I thought you were stuck up, and I know I’m always making fun of the girl scouts. But you’ve done us a good turn. Gee whiz, I always hated Miss Harrison, didn’t you? Because she kept us in till five o’clock. I guess she didn’t have any home. But, anyway, I have to admit you can play on the piano all right.
“And another thing I know about you, too: you started taking Italian in the Academic course. I bet you can speak Italian. I know the girl that used to sit next to you before you went to the High School; I pulled her on a sled once. You know the girl I mean. She was always eating chocolate. Believe me, I have to admit that you’ve got more sense than we have, and if you’ll help us to keep this blamed wagon out of our path of glory till the milk train comes we’re going to give a big racket in your honor when we get our car down to the field near the river, if we ever do.
“Honest, Minerva, to tell you the truth, we can’t eat another thing, and I see that what counts most in the world is brains—brains and mushrooms. But, gee whiz, I like ice cream, too.”