“I—I—eh—”
“Oh, you haven’t got it, huh?”
“What do you want to see it for?” Pee-wee shouted. “It looks just the same as all the rest of them, they all look alike. It’s just like all the rest of them you saw up the road. What’s the use of looking at it when one’s just like another? Gee whiz, do you call that having sense?”
To this clever argument the inspectors made no reply. Probably they felt that it was unanswerable. But Inspector Snagg continued to hold out his hand to Townsend in an insolently patient and skeptical way. “Come on, Kid,” he said.
“I just lost my license card,” said Townsend; “it was eaten by that goat.”
“Yere, is that so?”
“Sure it’s so,” screamed Pee-wee, “that shows how much you know about scouts if you think they lie, because I can prove he ate it because he ate eleven dollars, too, and a time-table, you can ask that woman—so now!”
The woman seemed to sense the situation for she emerged from her torpor long enough to pour forth a torrent of gibberish which seemed to be somewhat in the nature of self-defense and an elaborate exoneration of the goat. It concluded with a glowing peroration, seemingly, to the effect that Townsend had no right to hang his coat on her woven wire spring.
“Tell her you’ll buy the goat and then you’ll have the license card,” called Pee-wee.
“How can I buy the goat when the goat’s got all my money?” Townsend asked.