People who had not thought enough about the parade to wait on Terrace Avenue were ready enough to step out or to throw open their windows, now that the motley procession was passing their very doors. In less than half a minute the quiet side street was seething with excitement. Women hurried, babies cried, lions roared, the steam calliope drowned the stirring music of the band, a gorgeous float bearing a fat woman and a skeleton lumbered around the corner.
Little Irene Flynn was somewhat timid about the proximity of wild beasts, but this feeling was nothing to her excitement at finding herself upon the porch of the sumptuous Ashley residence. But apparently her hero was not in the least abashed at finding himself in such a distinguished company. He and Irene sat side by side on a lower step, watching the parade with spellbound gaze.
“I’m the one that fixed it so you could all sit here and see it,” Pee-wee announced for the benefit of the company. “I made it turn the corner.”
“Really?” asked Mrs. Ashley.
“Absolutely, positively,” said Pee-wee; “you can ask her,” alluding to Irene.
“Yes, ma’am, he did,” Irene ventured tremulously.
“I’m on the school traffic patrol,” Pee-wee explained, “and I have charge of the traffic up on the corner. I stopped a truck so she could get across the street and it served the man right because he wasn’t going to stop, but anyway he had to stop because I got authority, so then his whole load fell over and it served him right.”
“It just did,” said a lady.
“So then I told the—did you see that man with the big, high hat leading the band? I motioned to him to come down this way and turn through the street in back of the school and do you know how it reminds me of the Mississippi River?”
“I can’t imagine.”