“Because they’re dead.”
“Oh, we’re so glad to see you, Walter,” said Cousin Prudence, embracing him till he rattled like a Ford car; “I thought you’d never, never, come to see us. And you’ve won the animal first aid badge! Oh, isn’t that perfectly wonderful!”
“I won a lot of others too,” Pee-wee said; “I’ve got nine badges. See them on my sleeve? When the tenth one is put there I’ll be a star scout. I’m going to be a patrol leader, too. I lost a marshmallow on that train. Are you going to have that meeting to-night?”
“We certainly are and you’re going to be the main attraction. You’re going to sit on the stage! Isn’t that just perfectly fine? I don’t believe you’ve ever been on a stage, now have you? Do you think you’ll be afraid?”
It was very hard for Pee-wee to admit that there was anything in the world he hadn’t done; and to have it intimated that he, the actor in Double-crossed, had never been on the stage, was as much as he could bear. But he remembered his voluntary promise to his mother and modified his answer.
“Sure, I’ve been on platforms and they’re the same as stages,” he said; “only they’re kind of different. When we get our awards we have to go on platforms. Do you think I’m scared of audiences? Gee whiz, they won’t hurt you. I’m not even scared of bears and they’re not as bad as audiences, that’s one thing sure.”
“But I mean a regular stage,” chirped Sympathea, “with woods painted in back and everything.”
“I’ve even been lost in the woods,” Pee-wee announced proudly. “Do you think I’m scared of painted woods? You can’t get lost in those. I’ve been—I’ve been—famished in the woods, when I was lost.”
“I thought scouts never got lost,” Miss Dorothy Docile carolled forth.
“That shows you don’t know anything about them,” Pee-wee said disdainfully; “they know all about getting lost; they get lost better than anybody else. Then they find their way out by resourcefulness. Do you know what that means?”