“What’s your name?” the stranger asked, contemplating Pee-wee curiously.
“Walter Collison Bately Harris, R.P., F.B.T., B.S.A. I bet you don’t know what that means. What’s yours?”
“Everett Braggen.”
“Do you live here?”
“Do you think I’d live in a place like this? No, I board here. But it’s better than where you’re going. That’s away, way off in the woods and there’s nobody there and it’s too far to walk—”
“You mean hike,” Pee-wee said.
“Anyway, you won’t have any fun down there,” said Master Braggen consolingly; “but you couldn’t get into our hotel, because it’s full and all the places here are full and we’re going to have a big tennis tournament next week and our hotel is going to win it because two fellows from Hydome University are coming to our hotel and they’re champions. You can come and see the tournament but you can’t be in the parade, because how could you go in it all alone?
“All the farms and boarding houses around here are getting up floats; ours is going to be the best. It’s going to be all decorated with bunting and paper lanterns and it’s going to be like grass on it and it’s going to represent our lawn. It’s going to have wicker chairs with people sitting in them and a girl is going to be lying in a hammock reading and I’m going to be sitting at a little wire table playing cards with another fellow. It’s going to have SNAILSDALE HOUSE above it. We’re going to win the prize and we’re going to win the tennis tournament too. It’s a good joke, because nobody knows that those two chaps from Hydome University are coming to our house. If I see you watching the parade I’ll wave my hand to you.”
The thought of this conventional youngster waving his hand condescendingly from his throne of glory was too much for Pee-wee. That rolling scene of complacent ease and comfort was terrible enough. But that Everett Braggen should look down from his card playing to wave a polite ta-ta to Pee-wee was more than our hero could bear. And he resolved then and there that he would organize a float bodying forth a scene so wild and blood-curdling as to strike terror to the whole brood of letter-writing, hammock-lounging, card-playing denizens who infested Snailsdale Manor. From his obscure retreat he would deal a mortal blow to civilization, the worst kind of civilization; he would deal this post office loitering and waiting-for-the-dinner bell business one tremendous stroke from which it would never recover.
He did not know how he was going to do this, but he was going to do it....