“Do you think I don’t know any long words?” he said. “I know some of the longest words that were ever invented and—and—even I can make special ones myself. Once I—don’t you cry—once I was kept in in school and Julia Carson was kept in too, because she wriggled in her seat—you know how girls do. I had to choose a word and write it a hundred times and I didn’t want to get through too soon, because I wanted to get out the same time she did. So I chose the word incomprehensibility, and I—”
“Is that girl pretty?” Pepsy wanted to know. “She’s got a wart on her finger. It’s the best one I ever saw,” Pee-wee said. “She’s afraid to get in a boat, that girl is.”
“I hate her,” Pepsy said.
“What for?” Pee-wee inquired. “Because she has a wart? Don’t you know it’s good luck to have warts?”
“Because—because she was bad and had to stay after school,” Pepsy said.
“That shows how much you know about logic,” Pee-wee said, “because I had to stay too and I was worse than she was. So there.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid to get in a boat,” Pepsy said proudly.
“I never said she was like you,” Pee-wee declared. “She’s not a tomboy.”
Pepsy seemed comforted.
“You leave that feller to me,” Pee-wee said. “I can handle Roy Blakeley and all his patrol and they’re a lot of jolliers—they think they’re so smart.”