“Hey, whata you gotta de bomb, hey! You blowa de house for de mon, spilla de spagett. What you do hey? Who maka you come? How you coma here, maka de big noise, whata you get huh, maka de trespass, you getta de jail, longa time—”
To Pee-wee the word which stood out most conspicuously in all this was the word trespass. “Do you mean to tell me I stopped here on purpose?” he shouted. “Your house was in the way and it stopped me. Is this house on a road?”
“Plenty de roada—”
“If it hadn’t been for your house I’d have gone right through to the road,” Pee-wee said excitedly. “Do you think I wanted to roll down the hill? Do you think I’m to blame if this wagon got separated from the oxen? That shows how much you know about breaking the law, because I know all about it and a wagon can’t trespass all by itself and I was inside of it and I didn’t make it go so I’m not to blame either. Your house is just as much to blame as I am because anyway I don’t know where I’m at and I can prove it!”
Either his finely conceived argument or his vehemence, seemed to impress the astonished Italian for he subsided to a less warlike attitude and seemed the more curious the more he inspected the gaudy meteor which had been precipitated into his premises. Perhaps the predominance (albeit disordered and bedraggled) of red, white and blue upon the float and its small passenger suggested to him that Uncle Sam was in supervision of this singular affair and he could not afford to trifle with that august friendship.
“Hey, whata you do?” he asked. “You maka de big bunk, spilla de spagett, spilla de chickens, whata you maka, hey?”
This seemed reasonable enough and Pee-wee shouted, “I’m here because I’m here and I don’t know what happened but if you see any oxen around here they belong to me and there’s another boy too. I was coming home from the parade and we kind of all of a sudden got cut in half. Maybe we got cut in three, because I don’t even know if he’s with the oxen, but anyway I’d like to know where I am.”
“You maka de biga fall, hey? Quicka lika dat?”
That was the idea exactly. They were getting together now. Tony must have had an inspiration. “Alla white lika de milk, can’t see, huh, you goa de whata you call, tumble, huh? Shoo. Disa der alla right, boss. You hava de good luck no banga de head. Shoo.”
“I always have good luck,” Pee-wee said, “and anyway I’d rather be with this half, so that shows I’m lucky.”