“That’s very kind of you.”
“If I tilt you over backward I bet you can’t get up by yourself with your hands clasped,” Pee-wee said. “We all tried that at scout meeting and I was the only one that did it. Are you good at doing things?”
“There aren’t any things here to do.”
“Sure there are,” Pee-wee said; “there are lots of things only you don’t do them. You have to invent them.”
“Well, I’m not an inventor; I’m not a boy scout.”
“No, but you’re a girl, aren’t you? Gee whiz, you have to admit that. That’s one thing I don’t like about girls, they take dares from people. I met a city feller at the station—”
“Where?” the girl asked excitedly.
“Oh, gee whiz, you wouldn’t like him. And he as much as dared me to join the parade. He said I couldn’t, so that means I have to, because there’s no such word as can’t in the dictionary. Gee, I hate language, don’t you?”
“You seem to use a good deal of it.”
“I mean studying it,” Pee-wee said. “What’s your favorite study?”