Pee-wee Harris in camp

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

He paused in his joyful reverie, and gazed out upon the glinting water. Yes, a scout was speaking to him already—from far off! For bobbing toward him in the moonlight was the gallant balloon of the Catskill Garage, dripping from its adventurous voyage, and dragging after it the dancing olive bottle with its invisible message to the world.

Billy Simpson might keep away from the festive throng, but he could not get away from Scout Harris.

CHAPTER XXIII—MOBILIZING

Billy Simpson intended to be a regular out-and-out scout. So before starting for Temple Camp he had spent the trifling amount of money which he had for several things he had seen advertised as being indispensable to scouts. One of these was a pocket flashlight. The advertisement had conveyed the belief to him that he could hardly expect to be a scout without one of these flashlights. “Say fellows! Just the thing!” the ad had begun. So poor Billy had bought one of those flashlights. A tried and true scout would have had better sense.

He now turned this flashlight on the paper which he fished out of the bottle, but not so much as a syllable was there written upon it. The reticent onion was true to its reputation. Billy laughed as he thought of Pee-wee.

Here was he, Billy Simpson, with the most modern kind of a device, a nickel-plated flashlight that would “throw a glare continuously for two hours or your money refunded,” and its value was set at naught by a homely onion in the hands of a true scout. The onion had cost nothing. Yet the most dazzling flashlight in the world could not render visible one word upon that scrap of paper. Only heat could do that. You don’t have to know anything to buy a flashlight. But you have to know something, that is you have to be a scout, to know the tender uses of the onion....

Yes, Gaylong was a real scout. And Harris was a real scout. And Billy was greatly dissatisfied with himself. Like most boys who do not mix readily and do not quickly become popular with the multitude, he was given to a morbid disgust with himself. He conceived his shyness as a sort of deficiency. He thought he was not likable.

He was now sorely at odds with himself. He had started out by helping somebody off the train and had jotted this down as a good turn. Then Gaylong, in his quiet, drawling way, had knocked this good turn into a cocked hat and made it seem trivial. He had bought a fine nickel flashlight— “just what every scout needs”—and Pee-wee Harris had made this “scout” trinket ridiculous. They were real scouts here at Temple Camp, not little tin scouts. They could do things. True, Pee-wee was a walking rummage sale, but what he carried on his diminutive person was nothing to what he carried in his head.

Billy Simpson was beginning to get the hang of this thing now. He pulled out of his pocket a handful of beans which he had intended to drop along the way in his pathless explorations so that he could find his way back. He scattered them into the lake. “If I can’t find my way without those things I deserve to get lost,” he said. Contemptuous of his own weakness he threw away a whistle he had bought, a boy scout whistle—“just the thing, fellows” of course. “I ought to be able to make as much noise with my mouth as Harris can,” he said, disgustedly. That was saying a good deal....

Then he sauntered up toward the camp-fire and instead of treating himself to the small glory which the discovery of the bottle might have brought him, he slipped in among the assemblage unnoticed and gave the paper to his patrol leader, Artie Van Arlen. And all the while Billy Simpson was the best oarsman at Temple Camp. In his hands a canoe paddle became a thing of magic. But he could not “join in”; he just didn’t know how.