“If we win the prize we’re going to buy a victrola,” Pee-wee announced, in a sudden inspiration, “and then we can have dances here, hey?” He looked almost imploringly at Hope. She was sitting on a milk stool which she had been using to stand on; her gaze was on the ground, and she was tracing lines in the dirt with her little foot.
“So you think you’ll win the prize, do you?” Everett Braggen asked, patronizingly.
“Sure, because I’m lucky,” said Pee-wee.
Neither Everett Braggen nor Hope Stillmore caught these momentous words. Hope was too preoccupied with visions of Russian pianists and college boys and dances. Everett Braggen was too much preoccupied with himself. So neither took to heart those words of defiant confidence uttered by this little outsider....
Girls might come and go, but Pee-wee’s luck would not forsake him. And it would have been well for Miss Hope Stillmore if she could have but known that.
CHAPTER XI
HOPE TRIUMPHANT
“I tell you what I’ll do,” said Everett Braggen, quick to interpret Hope’s thoughts. “I’ll take you and your mother up to town in my car and you can see how you like the place, and I’ll bring you back again.”
“Don’t you do it, Hope,” said Pee-wee, “because don’t you know, you and I are partners?”
“Oh, it’s so silly,” she said, “trying to compete with those houses up in Snailsdale.”