“I’m brandhorse,” he repeated, wrestling with a large mouthful of pie, “I’mgngtendlrs.”
The bite of pie conquered, Pee-wee proceeded to enlighten his mother as to his latest enterprise.
“You know the—”
“Don’t eat while you’re talking,” said Mrs. Harris.
“You know the Punkhall Stock Company?” Pee-wee continued excitedly. “They’re coming to the Lyric Theatre next week. They’re going to play New York successes. They advertised for a boy to brand a horse and I went to see the man and his name is Rantrnetolme—”
“Stop! Wait a minute; now go on. And don’t take another bite till you finish.”
“Mr. Ranter he’s manager and he said I’d do and I only have to be in that one play and I only have to be on the stage one minute and I’ll get ten dollars and everybody’ll clap and I bet you’ll be glad and it—anyway, it isn’t a hot iron at all, but it’s painted red so it will look hot and it doesn’t hurt the horse only it looks as if it did, so can I do it?” he concluded breathlessly. “You can’t say that red paint will hurt a horse,” he added anxiously. “Gee whiz, I wouldn’t be cruel, but red paint can’t hurt anybody.”
“What is the name of this play?” Pee-wee’s mother asked.
“The name of it is Double-crossed and I’ll tell you all about it, it’s a dandy play, a man has a double cross for trade-mark, see? And he’s a villain and he gets a kid to crawl through a hole in the fence, it’s out west in Arizona, and that kid has to brand one of the other man’s horses so the man will admit the horse belongs to the other man and the other man can take him, see? That’s what you call a plot. The man beats me if I say I won’t do it, so I do it and I don’t say anything at all and after the play is over I get ten dollars, so will you come and see me?”
“Where is the boy who usually does that?” Mrs. Harris asked, rather ruefully.