“Are there any more cookies?”
“Not unless you left some. Have you closed the screen door?”
“Sure, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to start a relay race to Temple Camp and the last feller’ll be my good turn guest. I want the map that’s in the coffee-pot in the duffel bag. I got the idea from a licorice gum-drop that fell down where the pansies are—”
“I hope you didn’t eat it,” Mrs. Harris called.
“Don’t you know a scout isn’t supposed to waste anything?” Pee-wee shot back.
“Well, then I think he shouldn’t waste his time packing up his things and then pulling them all to pieces again,” said his mother gently, as she appeared at the head of the stairs. The occasion seemed so momentous to Pee-wee that Mrs. Harris could not refrain from surveying the tumultuous proceedings from the top landing of the stairs. “You’re going to get all over-heated about nothing, Walter,” she said gently. “Why don’t you sit down and read a book?”
“You stick up for the handbook, don’t you?” Pee-wee demanded. “Well, that’s where I got it, so there! I put my road map in the coffee-pot, now where is it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Walter, but I wish you’d be careful of your father’s straw hat. Put the rug down at the corner where you kicked it up and do try not to get so excited.” She gazed ruefully down at the litter at the foot of the stairs, where saucepan, shirts, belt axe, fishing tackle, semaphore flags and every variety of preserved edibles lay in utter chaos. “Pull that can of salmon out from under the hat-rack, Walter, before you forget it. And get that can of evaporated milk that has rolled into the parlor; I can see it under the piano. And close the screen door tight; how many times have I told you—”
“It isn’t in the coffee-pot,” shouted Pee-wee; “there’s nothing there but the mosquito dope and the ink—”
“You shouldn’t put bottles like that in the coffee-pot, Walter. Suppose they should break—why, the ink might get into the coffee.”