Pee-wee Harris in Luck

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“Gee whiz, there are a lot of things to do, I thought up about seventeen already and maybe even I’ll be able to get some fellers here for you, because scouts can do lots of things, miracles kind of, only you and I’ll be pals, hey? Will you?”

“Indeed I will,” said Hope Stillmore, “only you made me hurt my knee.”

“Don’t you care,” said Pee-wee.

CHAPTER V

PALS

So Miss Hope Stillmore was launched upon the sea of adventure in a rocking chair with Scout Harris for pilot. She abandoned the study of monotony for the study of carpentry, interior and exterior decoration, botany, photography, stalking, signalling, tracking, and a variety of other scout arts.

It was Pee-wee’s fate in life to be accepted as a substitute for something better because he was amusing. He did not object to this because, as he said, he had plenty of fun just the same. Being small and full of enterprises entirely disproportionate to his size, he was acceptable everywhere and universally liked. Girls thought he was “excruciating” and “adorable.” Men were greatly taken with him and liked to hear him talk. At Temple Camp, where he and his scout troop spent the summers, he was called the mascot, sometimes the animal cracker. Pee-wee had not an enemy. More than that, he had none but friends.

But he had never had a pal. He had called many boys, and some girls, his “particular chums,” but these chums had lived elsewhere than in Pee-wee’s home town; they were the friends of his holiday adventures and enterprises. They, on their part, had fast and steady chums whom they returned to.

Each summer Pee-wee had a particular chum at Temple Camp. But he had no pal in his scout troop or out of it. You see that was because Pee-wee was a mascot and not to be taken seriously. They liked to have him along when there were two or three others in the party. But no one fellow sought him out. He would stand as much jollying as a Ford will stand abuse. Perhaps, after all, it was just because he was small and rather unique that he stood alone. He was too generous, or perhaps too busy, to resent it when some companion of a month or so deserted him for more important things. Was he not himself always jumping from one scheme to another?

So, perhaps, he did not exactly speak out of the depths of his heart when he proposed that he and Hope Stillmore be pals. Perhaps she did not answer him out of the depths of her heart when she told him that they certainly would.