“Can’t I tell my sister?” Willie asked.
“No, sisters are even worse than regular girls,” said Pee-wee; “sisters are the worst kind. Now I’ll tell you what you have to do. You sit here on this float and watch it till I get back, then we’ll sail out on the lake with sealed orders; do you know what those are?”
“Like captains of ships have?” Willie ventured.
“Sure, and if anybody asks you what we’re going to do you tell them I’m going to win the pioneering badge, but don’t tell them anything else; understand?”
The two small boys sat side by side on the edge of the float watching their leader as he disappeared around the main pavilion. Their admiration of him knew no bounds. They felt that they were already a part of some dark mystery. It was very easy indeed for them to refrain from telling anybody anything, since they did not know anything to tell....
CHAPTER XIV—THE AUTOCRAT
The enterprise which Pee-wee was now about to launch was the most gigantic of any that had ever emanated from his seething brain. We shall have to follow it step by step. His first call was at Administration Shack where he asked Tom Slade, camp assistant, if he and his patrol might have the use of the old float for cruising.
“You know the one I mean,” he said; “it’s the one I fell off of that summer when I was diving for licorice jaw breakers. Don’t you remember the day my mouth was all black? It’s got four barrels under it to hold it up—”
“What, your mouth?” young Mr. Slade asked.
“No, the old float, and the barrels are airtight, because they were filled with water when the float was drawn up and I’ve got two in my patrol and they haven’t shrunk, I mean the barrels, so will it be all right for us to pitch our tent on that old float and kind of be sea scouts, because anyway all of us know how to swim and I saved a scout from drowning last summer. Can we?”