“That shows how much you know,” Pee-wee continued excitedly, for he saw the case was desperate. “Just because I’m a boy scout that doesn’t say I wasn’t in the same movie film that showed President Harding, you can ask anybody. And the President of the United States sent the Boy Scouts a letter, too, and I saw a lot of famous people and I know a feller at Temple Camp that shook hands with Buffalo Bill, gee whiz, the Snailsdale House isn’t so much; anyway you crossed your heart.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, you were going to, and don’t you know how I said I was going to treat you to ice cream after the parade?
It shows if you quit
You haven’t got grit.
That’s what all the scouts say up at Temple Camp, and anyway you can ask any feller up there if I don’t always win, because I’m lucky—you can ask anybody. So let’s start work, hey? And he can watch us if he wants to.”
It was characteristic of Pee-wee that with all his flaunting boasts about his triumphs in everything he undertook, he did not mention his real heroic act of killing the rattlesnake and saving his pal’s precious life.
Nor, alas, did she think of that, either. Without saying a word she arose and started toward the house. As she crossed the barnyard she threw the hammer down in the mud. But the strip of bunting was still over her shoulder and wound around her waist and it made her look very winsome.
She ran up the stairs and into her mother’s room flushed with hurry and excitement and fresh hopes.
“Oh, mother, just listen,” she panted. “There are two rooms at the Snailsdale House and we can have them if we want them, only we’ll have to act right straight away! Remember, you promised we’d go up there after you rested—if we could get rooms. There’s a boy outside that knows little Walter Harris and he has a car and he says he’ll take us up there. Oh, it would be just a wicked shame to miss the chance. There are going to be lots and lots of people there for August. Two perfectly lovely fellows are coming up Saturday—”